Quotes About London

When I was about 17 I was on the G.B. squad and that's where I wanted to be. I went to the Commonwealth Games and got silver there, but the three years I was on the team it was London-this, London-that. It was all preparation for the Olympics.

I wanted to cut past the polemics and experience London's Muslim communities for myself. My first visit was to Tower Hamlets, an East London borough that is about 38% Muslim, among the highest in the U.K. As I walked down Whitechapel Road, the adhan, or call to prayer, echoed through the neighborhood.

People from all over the world come to London wanting to make their own mark on it, and they add to the energy and vitality of the capital. It's got a bit busier since the '60s, but the more the merrier!

Individual and corporate support is vital to building on London's leadership in the arts, and I hope others will join me in wanting to build on the National's role at the heart of modern theatre and sustaining it long into the future.

The day after the Oscars, I flew back to London to film a television play for Anglia. It was a big mistake because you never really get acknowledged for wanting to work in England, as I did.

My kids are the offspring of people who are doing reasonably well and live in the centre of London and the chances are they're going to turn out ghastly anyway. Who's to say they shouldn't have a walk-in wardrobe and possibly a stylist from the age of four?

London's inspired my wardrobe 100 per cent. Layering and having cool coats. The Brits just do it right.

My parents had a six floor warehouse on Curtain Road called Cordy House between 2004 and 2007 where we had some of the most banging and memorable London parties.

I went to the big Picasso retrospective at the Tate in the sixties, and I think I went to an Andy Warhol retrospective at the Tate in the sixties, too. My mother was very good at taking me to things like that. We lived in Reading, but we went on these cultural trips to London.

Many of my favourite hotels are in London. I like the Covent Garden Hotel and I stayed at Blakes last time I was in London. I like the feeling of warmth and homeliness that you get from both of those places.

My relationship with the Philharmonia Orchestra brought me many times to London and I will always reflect positively on that early period of development with them - their patience, their warmth, their dedication.

I moved to London with this really warped sense of expectation.

If I could time-travel, I would either go to the '70s and watch the first 'Star Wars' film the day it opened, or to 1880s London, during the Jack the Ripper era, and experience the true grossness of that time.

I moved to New York last year and I love it. It's a huge change and I've always wanted to spend time there. It's like a more intense London, and everything's up a few notches. The lights are brighter, the pace is faster and the food's better.

The King was one of the first to bring up the question. 'He hopes,' wrote his private secretary Sir Arthur Bigge, on 5 January 1911 'that these outrages by foreigners will lead you to consider whether the Aliens Act could not be amended so as to prevent London from being infested with men and women whose presence would not be tolerated in any other country.

I want London to be the global sporting capital.

The way everyone in London is right up against each other makes it very real to you growing up, the fact that people have different lives to you. And that causes problems; of course it does.

London Pride is a big event in the global celebration of freedom.

I came to London. It had become the center of my world and I had worked hard to come to it. And I was lost.

I was part of London 2012 in the build-up and there's always drama ahead of a major championship or Games.

We grew up in west London, everyone was poor, and we bought our clothes from charity shops or from Portobello.

I spend a fair amount of time chatting to black cab drivers in London.

I've always been following Chelsea and every time I came to London I would try to see a Chelsea game and see how the team was doing because it's been my dream to come to play here.

I am very happy in London and to be at Chelsea.