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Malcolm Bradbury Quotes (1932-2000)
Writer, Novelist
About Malcolm Bradbury
Sir Malcolm Stanley Bradbury CBE (7 September 1932 – 27 November 2000) was an English comic novelist, screenwriter, literary critic and academic. He pioneered the teaching of creative writing and American studies in British universities.
Best Malcolm Bradbury Quotes
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Explore our curated collection of the most famous and impactful Malcolm Bradbury quotes.
“Genitals are a great distraction to scholarship.”
“To you liberals, of course, goats are just sheep from broken homes.”
“I like the English. They have the most rigid code of immorality in the world.”
“The English are polite by telling lies. The Americans are polite by telling the truth.”
“"You see, you are an optimist and live on hope. I am a pessimist and live on experience."”
“'Look, Felicity,' says Howard, 'there's only one rule. Follow the line of your own desires.'”
“'Oh, everybody exploits somebody,' says Howard, 'in this social order it's part of the human lot.'”
“"We got a course in picknicking at the university," said Dr. Bourbon. "It's called Geology, but it's really picknicking."”
“"Well, yes, surely I think everybody ought to enjoy life as much as it's humanly possible because that's why we exist. I believe."”
“My experience of ships is that on them one makes an interesting discovery about the world. One finds one can do without it completely.”
“It had always seemed to Louis that a fundamental desire to take postal courses was being sublimated by other people into sexual activity.”
“[A]nd the traffic noise that boomed in through the window was another reminder of what his spirit knew, that he was but a grain of sand in someone else's desert.”
“The better class of Briton likes to send his children away to school until they're old and intelligent enough to come home again. Then they're too old and intelligent to want to.”
“A conventional good read is usually a bad read, a relaxing bath in what we know already. A true good read is surely an act of innovative creation in which we, the readers, become conspirators.”
“Reading someone else's newspaper is like sleeping with someone else's wife. Nothing seems to be precisely in the right place, and when you find what you are looking for, it is not clear then how to respond to it.”
Malcolm Bradbury Quotes by Topic
Find exactly what you are looking for by browsing this categorized list of Malcolm Bradbury quotes by topic.
Malcolm Bradbury on Scholarship
“Genitals are a great distraction to scholarship.”
Malcolm Bradbury on Geology
“"We got a course in picknicking at the university," said Dr. Bourbon. "It's called Geology, but it's really picknicking."”
What Malcolm Bradbury Said About Others
Discover personal opinions Malcolm Bradbury shared regarding contemporaries.
Malcolm Bradbury on Anthony Burgess 3 quotes
“[T]he post-Joycean artist as lecher-poet, obsessed with death, language and his own insides.”
Malcolm Bradbury on Salman Rushdie
Malcolm Bradbury on Angus Wilson
“His fiction – radical, satirical, polyvalent, sexually courageous, global – extended the mainstream novel, and led it somewhere else. Still not fully recognized, he was one of Britain's greatest late-twentieth-century writers.”
About Malcolm Bradbury
Sir Malcolm Stanley Bradbury CBE (7 September 1932 – 27 November 2000) was an English comic novelist, screenwriter, literary critic and academic. He pioneered the teaching of creative writing and American studies in British universities.