39 Quotes by Michael Frayn

A toy car is a projection of a real car, made small enough for a child’s hand and imagination to grasp. A real car is a projection of a toy car, made large enough for an adult’s hand and imagination to grasp.

To be absolutely honest, what I feel really bad about is that I don’t feel worse. There’s the ineffectual liberal’s problem in a nutshell.

I feel bad that I don’t feel worse.

And this is a table ma’am. What in essence it consists of is a horizontal rectilinear plane surface maintained by four vertical columnar supports, which we call legs. The tables in this laboratory, ma’am, are as advanced in design as one will find anywhere in the world.

It’s funny – there’s nothing that stops you laughing like the sight of other people laughing about something else.

You just have to work with what God sends, and if God doesn’t seem to understand the concept of commercial success, then that’s your bad luck.

I can understand, he said, that many people, many perfectly ordinary people, have an interesting story to tell. No one’s experience of life is valueless.

Early spring, yes. It’s one of those cautiously hopeful days at the beginning of April, after the clocks have made their great leap forward but before the weather or the more suspicious trees have quite had the courage to follow them, and Kate and I are traveling north in a car crammed with food and books and old saucepans and spare pieces of furniture.

Cambridge produces in abundance talents with the ability to please, but few with that greater ability to disregard whether they please or not.