Quotes By A. N. Wilson

The scribbler's life is never done.

If you know somebody is going to be awfully annoyed by something you write, that's obviously very satisfying, and if they howl with rage or cry, that's honey.

I wanted passionately to be a priest.

On the rare occasions when I spend a night in Oxford, the keeping of the hours by the clock towers in New College, and Merton, and the great booming of Tom tolling 101 times at 9 pm at Christ Church are inextricably interwoven with memories and regrets and lost joys. The sound almost sends me mad, so intense are the feelings it evokes.

Nearly all monster stories depend for their success on Jack killing the Giant, Beowulf or St. George slaying the Dragon, Harry Potter triumphing over the basilisk. That is their inner grammar, and the whole shape of the story leads towards it.

The fact that logic cannot satisfy us awakens an almost insatiable hunger for the irrational.

It would no doubt be very sentimental to argue - but I would argue it nevertheless - that the peculiar combination of joy and sadness in bell music - both of clock chimes, and of change-ringing - is very typical of England. It is of a piece with the irony in which English people habitually address one another.

People become dons because they are incapable of doing anything else in life.

Fear of death has never played a large part in my consciousness - perhaps unimaginative of me.

I believe the collapse of the House of Windsor is tied in with the collapse of the Church of England.

There is no doubt that, since 1977 and the launch of Apple II - the first computer it produced for the mass market - many things which used to be done on paper, or on the telephone, have been done easier and faster on a screen.

Since Einstein developed his theory of relativity, and Rutherford and Bohr revolutionised physics, our picture of the world has radically changed.

I very much dislike the intolerance and moralism of many Christians, and feel more sympathy with Honest Doubters than with them.

When Christians start thinking about Jesus, things start breaking down, they lose their faith. It's perfectly possible to go to church every Sunday and not ask any questions, just because you like it as a way of life. They fear that if they ask questions they'll lose their Christ, the very linchpin of their religion.

The Royal Family are not like you and me. They live in houses so big that you can walk round all day and never need to meet your spouse. The Queen and Prince Philip have never shared a bedroom in their lives. They don't even have breakfast together.

My kind publishers, Toby Mundy and Margaret Stead of Atlantic Books, have commissioned me to write the life of Queen Victoria.

The really clever people now want to be lawyers or journalists.

Anti-Semitism is extremely common.

Everyone writes in Tolstoy's shadow, whether one feels oneself to be Tolstoyan or not.

It seems astonishing to be paid for indulging in pure pleasure. For me to go to Coburg is rather as if a trainspotter was sent for a few weeks to Swindon or a chocoholic asked on holiday by Green and Black.

Truth comes to us mediated by human love.

The latest research has revealed that women have a higher IQ than men.

I think one of the very frightening things about the regime of the National Socialists is that it made people happy.

When I think about atheist friends, including my father, they seem to me like people who have no ear for music, or who have never been in love.

I think that if you can't be loyal to the Church, it's best to get out.

I might be deceiving myself but I do not think that I do have an inordinate fear of death.

It is eerie being all but alone in Westminster Abbey. Without the tourists, there are only the dead, many of them kings and queens. They speak powerfully and put my thoughts into vivid perspective.

In the past, I used to counter any such notions by asking myself: 'Would you really want President Hattersley?' I now find that possibility rather cheers me up. With his chubby, Dickensian features and his knowledge of T.H. Green and other harmless leftish political classics, Hattersley might not be such a bad thing after all.

Like many people in Britain, I have an affectionate respect for the Queen, and am surprised that I should be having such republican thoughts.

I've never had a study in my life. I'm like Jane Austen - I work on the corner of the dining table.