Quotes from A. A. Gill

I don't know if English is the only language where some expressions only and solely mean the opposite of what they say but we do have an awful lot of them.

I've often been accused of dressing too well. I've always been fascinated by fashion, though I don't think I'm particularly fashionable.

I still secretly believe that afternoons are the time for the test card and you shouldn't watch television when the sun is out.

Women's handbags are incredibly heavy. You rarely get to pick one up and, when you do, you wonder why anyone carries so much stuff around all day.

Have you ever wondered why the rich and privileged care about, or even bother with, the gift bag? Because they don't need this stuff. If they wanted it, they could afford to buy it, without blinking. But they love the gift bag, beyond reason.

The Creation Museum isn't really a museum at all. It's an argument. It's not even an argument. It's the ammunition for an argument. It is the Word made into bullets. An armory of righteous revisionism.

Everyone has to go to a funeral at some time and you need to be dark and sombre, and in a black tie.

And learn to tie a bow - it's not difficult and there's no excuse for either a clip-on or the hideous Hollywood straight tie.

The French are never happy coming to London; this is an ancient and comforting enmity.

The pleasure in lovers' gifts is that they are often covert and secretive, worn next to the skin, hidden under pillows.

Being able to afford everything you desire is not, by any means, the worst thing that can happen to you. But, depressingly, and more profoundly, neither is it the best.

Shorts are silly. Men in shorts are silly men. And silly is the very worst thing a man can be.

London is a city of ghosts; you feel them here. Not just of people, but eras. The ghost of empire, or the blitz, the plague, the smoky ghost of the Great Fire that gave us Christopher Wren's churches and ushered in the Georgian city.

No British TV company could ever make a series like 'The West Wing' about British politics. It would beggar credibility. No one could write it with a straight face, or perform it without giggling.

Texting isn't writing. It's not like letter writing. Texting is short scriptwriting. It's a collaborative soap opera where nothing happens.

Because there is no better tool for writing than experience. It has very little to do with grammar and everything to do with knowing.

The truth and the facts aren't necessarily the same thing. Telling the truth is the object of all art; facts are what the unimaginative have instead of ideas.

If you're bored, it's because someone else is fulfilling his dream. Become a bore. It's the most interesting thing you'll ever do.

Writing, for me, is the great organiser. It's while writing that I think most deeply about things.

So much of life is not about whether you're good or bad, or right or wrong, or can afford or not afford - it's just about timing.

The trouble with righting some wrongs is that it makes the remaining ones seem even more unbearable.

Twenty is a tough age because it slips past in the middle of so much else - university, gap year, leaving home, getting jobs.

When you look at traditions closely, examine what they really are, you realize they're made up of layers and layers of deferrals, delays, indecisions, tomorrows and long lunches.

Bald isn't like being ethnic or disabled. Everyone can and will make jokes about it and expect you to laugh good-naturedly, which you will.