A. A. Gill

Writer

1954-06-28 – 2016-12-10

Quotes by A. A. Gill

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

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• We have to thank the members of the Romantic movement for the sober colours of suits. It was their love of the Gothic that put us in grey and black but the suit stuck.

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• It's not in the nature of stoic Cincinnatians to boast, which is fortunate, really, for they have meager pickings to boast about.

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• A cravat is the only item of named after Croatians. Balkan mercenaries were brought to Paris by Louis XIV. Their strange and exotic attire attracted the French bon hommes, who were wearing formal ruffs, and who immediately took to the simple and relaxed military cloth tied at the neck.

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• The London police have discovered that the best way to neuter demonstrations is not to move everyone on, or disperse troublemakers, but hold them close, cordon them into a diminishing space for hours and hours, as a sort of arbitrary al fresco arrest.

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• No 13-year-old or over should ever be seen in trousers that finish above the ankle. It doesn't matter how good your legs are, or if you're on a beach in Bermuda where they invented the things.

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• As handbags get ever more absurdly large, so they need to carry more stuff to validate the expense of this huge trunk with chains, buckles and padlocks on.

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• Money has to be an explosion of excitement and opportunity, yet we already secretly know that it doesn't do what it promises. Nothing has ever given us as much pleasure as our pocket money when we were 12, or our first wage at the end of that first exhausting week, paid in folded cash.

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• People collect boredom, they hoard it, they wallow in it, hoping that one day it'll be of interest and become an effete ennui. Let me tell you, it doesn't.

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• There are five great ages of man - five moments when you need to reevaluate everything, clear out the cupboard and the wardrobe, and most importantly, your head. They are 13, 20, 30, 40 and 60. All men need to know this.

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• I'm frightened of my innate vanity. I mean: the suits lined with scarves? Even I know the warning signs. I could quite easily end up in a tiny Playboy mansion, all on my own.

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

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• 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.

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• If you were a pigeon you could fuck forty times a day. It's something to bear in mind when filling out the form for reincarnation.

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• My father was a film-maker. He always said he wanted to go like Humphrey Jennings, the legendary director who stepped backwards over a cliff while framing a better shot.

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• Science fiction is never about the future, in the same way history is rarely about the past: they're both parable formats for examining or commenting on the present.

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• I don't know how long a child will remain utterly static in front of the television, but my guess is that it could be well into their thirties.

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