Quotes from Aidan Chambers

Life is not like a novel, but a novel can be like life. The best ones always are.

Maybe we should always start everything from the inside and work to the outside, and not from the outside to the inside. What d'you think?

You have to know your own truth and stick to it. And never despair. Never give up. There's always hope. -from Postcards from No Man's Land

But the bit I liked best was where it said it's impossible to define love because it takes so many forms and is so complicated.

I sometimes wonder whether most people choose their hobbies because they lust after the gear more than for the benefits of the activities themselves.

If we try to measure Now, we find it's always gone, has become part of the past.

Don't be his story. Don't be anyone else's story. Be your own story. Protect yourself.

Rooms are a fixed size, which can't be altered without pulling down walls and building new ones. They should be unchanging in shape and proportions. But sometimes they do change depending on who's in them.

In all our times together so far, this was the first time I felt we were enjoying ourselves, without strain or any sense of difference of age or deference, concession or inequality. It was, I thought afterwards, the first time we had met as ourselves, untrammelled, unguarded and in tune.

Readers are made by readers.

Unfortunately, ..., all too often a joke tells the truth.

It is not growing like a tree In bulk, doth make Man better be; Or standing long an oak, three hundred year, To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sere: A lily of a day Is fairer far in May Although it fall and die that night; It was the plant and flower of Light. In small proportions we just beauties see; And in short measures life may perfect be (Ben Jonson)

the perfect example of Robinson's law. This states that human idiocy multiplies in compound ratio to the number of people gathered together in one place for a common purpose.

As Oscar Wilde put it, Experience is the name we give to our mistakes. No no, Oscar, darl: Experience is the name of the whole darn game.

I don't just want to ban The Bomb. I want to ban all bombs, whatever, and all bombers, whoever, and all bombings, whyever. There have to be better ways of saying no and making changes.

And the price for being a homo-hater should be as high as anyone can pay.

Karl was no glamour boy. But even during this first meeting I discovered he had something better. The kind of intelligence that's more attractive than physical beauty.

I am without any doubt whatever a NON-actor. For a start, the gushing pretension of would-be actors puts me off. Ergo ego. I watch them preening in front of the rehearsal mirrors in the drama hall. Just waiting for applause. All they want is to be liked. Plus admired, adored, idolized, flattered, etc. And they're more like groupy than glue. If they're on their own for more than five minutes they get withdrawal symptoms and go walkabout, looking for kindred lost souls to coagulate with.

Ci siamo spogliati nel palazzo degli specchi. Abbiamo ispezionato con tenerezza le ferite l'uno dell'altro. La mia faccia gonfia e il labbro rotto. Le abrasioni di Barry sui fianchi e sulle cosce e le escoriazioni sulle mani e le ginocchia, dovute allo sfregamento sul marciapiede. Nient'altro. E nessun'altra scusa per toccare, seguire e accarezzare i contorni dei nostri corpi per la prima volta.

It's like a sleepover, when you feel you can say all kinds of things, because the darkness hides your blushes.

At the end of things we turn into historians. Sometimes happy, sometimes nostalgic, sometimes regretful or bitter, sometimes to reassure ourselves that we have amounted to something, however small. And sometimes, as I am doing now, to try with the wisdom of hindsight to make sense of ourselves.

Love: that which cannot be done without; wish always to be with, be part of, belong to, know intimately inside and out, entirely, WHOLE-LY, for ever and ever amen. Shining bright words in amazing patterns of endless variety. Drawing of the inside of my head.

L'amore appena nato ha una visione a tunnel della realtà, la sua retina è uno schermo cinematografico, vede il mondo rifatto secondo la sua utopistica interpretazione.

Yes, even in your mouse moods you only play with the idea of not being." She cleared her throat again. "Biology, you see. It's because of biology that we want to live and not to die. And it is because of biology that we come to a time when we want to die and not to live.