A.A. Gill Quotes

#1. Television gives us the gift to see ourselves as we'd like to be seen.

A.A. Gill

#2. Niagara Falls Power Company chose to go with AC current to feed the industry of Buffalo, which became briefly known as the electric city of the future.

A.A. Gill

#3. Old guns rarely die, they just hang on walls.

A.A. Gill

#4. You either get the point of Africa or you don't. What draws me back year after year is that it's like seeing the world with the lid off.

A.A. Gill

#5. respect to the Indians, because the very idea of America belongs to immigrants.

A.A. Gill

#6. America is Europe's greatest invention.

A.A. Gill

#7. America didn't bypass or escape civilization. It did something far more profound, far cleverer: it simply changed what civilization could be.

A.A. Gill

#8. I still secretly believe that afternoons are the time for the test card and you shouldn't watch television when the sun is out.

A.A. Gill

#9. Breakfast is everything. The beginning, the first thing. It is the mouthful that is the commitment to a new day, a continuing life.

A.A. Gill

#10. Europe is a place that conserves. It maintains, it curates its civilization, protects it against the ravages and rust of other cultures, and the rot of time and intellectual theft. We are a continent where fear of losing what we have is greater than the ambition to make it anew.

A.A. Gill

#11. Sport is how poor kids from poor countries pass through the eye of the needle to riches and recognition.

A.A. Gill

#12. Americans think the only funny Brits are John Cleese, Benny Hill and whoever makes our toothpaste. They're not laughing with us, they are laughing at us.

A.A. Gill

#13. The truth and the facts aren't necessarily the same thing. Telling the truth is the object of all art; facts are what the unimaginative have instead of ideas.

A.A. Gill

#14. Lawyers are the new three-button, white-collar, cuff-shooting cowboys. They fulfill all the cowboy criteria. Workingmen with arcane skills. They can be both good and bad, sheriffs and gunslingers.

A.A. Gill

#15. In America, immigration is the story of hope and achievement, of youth, of freedom, of creation. But all entrances on one stage are exits elsewhere.

A.A. Gill

#16. A lobster bisque ought to be the crowning glory of the potager. And this one was excellent. Silky as a gigolo's compliment and fishy as a chancellor's promise.

A.A. Gill

#17. 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.

A.A. Gill

#18. Beautifully shot, impeccably paced, it was a clear, unrelenting look at the National Trust, its friends and enemies, and it makes you want to burn your passport and beg the Luftwaffe to have another go.

A.A. Gill

#19. Facts are what pedantic, dull people have instead of opinions.

A.A. Gill

#20. 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.

A.A. Gill

#21. The French in particular confuse unadorned direct language with a lack of culture or intellectual elegance.

A.A. Gill

#22. Is it a particularly British trait to so utterly adore truly appalling men, from Tony Hancock through to Steptoe and Alf Garnett, Captain Mainwaring, Rigsby, Del Boy, Victor Meldrew and on to David Brent from The Office. The most deeply adored characters are all simply vile.

A.A. Gill

#23. He (Jeremy Clarkson) is the last man standing on the beach commanding the glaciers' melt waters to go back

A.A. Gill

#24. The reason that chefs become chefs is that they're not allowed into rooms with windows.

A.A. Gill

#25. Celebrity is a national drama whose characters' parts and plots are written by the tabloids, gossip columnists, websites and interactive buttons. The famous don't actually have to turn up to their own lives at all.

A.A. Gill

#26. The interesting adults are always the school failures, the weird ones, the losers, the malcontents, this isn't wishful thinking. It's the rule.

A.A. Gill

#27. 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.

A.A. Gill

#28. Nobody ever forgets their first night in the bush. It's among the precious, meagre handful of life firsts that remain indelible.

A.A. Gill

#29. It was one thing not taking an old bitterness to a new country. It was another to actually pay to send back Libyan Semtex to blow up my home.

A.A. Gill

#30. We like to see death as an unfair conspiracy, and what we want is a magic practitioner, a combination of Dr Watson and Sherlock Holmes.

A.A. Gill