Stephen Clarke Quotes

#1. Orsini and one of his fellow conspirators were guillotined, and an accomplice called Carlo di Rudio was transported to Devil's Island, the notorious French prison camp in French Guiana. He escaped and later fought alongside General Custer at Little Big Horn. True to form, he survived.

Stephen Clarke

#2. James II's second wife, an Italian Catholic princess called Mary (at the time, there was an edict whereby all female royals were to be called Mary to confuse future readers of history books),

Stephen Clarke

#3. The Frenchmen tried to explain that sexual intercourse between males was taboo (despite anything the Brits might have told them about French sailors),

Stephen Clarke

#4. It must have been hard making a silent movie about a girl who hears voices.)

Stephen Clarke

#5. There's no room for human rights in a government waiting room.

Stephen Clarke

#6. There is a French version of the story, and a true one.

Stephen Clarke

#7. He could have had "dull" tattooed across his forehead, but that would have made him too exciting.

Stephen Clarke

#8. Only the French, I thought, could attain orgasm by listening to themselves. It was self-inflicted oral sex. A DIY blowjob.

Stephen Clarke

#9. Tanacharison (who could relate to the cow because he claimed that the French had boiled and eaten his father),

Stephen Clarke

#10. When a Quebecker is interviewed for French TV, he or she is often subtitled in 'normal' French, as if the language they speak in francophone Canada is so barbarous that Parisians won't be able to understand

Stephen Clarke

#11. This is of course the Prince of Wales's motto to this day, though subsequent princes have not adopted John of Bohemia's custom of fighting while tied up and blind.

Stephen Clarke

#12. It was Voltaire who said that 'in a government, you need both shepherds and butchers.' The problem in France was that the butchers kept killing the shepherds, while the sheep turned cannibal.

Stephen Clarke

#13. The prospect of one day being hauled out of the canal by yet another old enemy was hard for France to swallow, even more so when British and French defence specialists discussed their exit strategy in case of an overwhelming Soviet attack, and the Brits proposed a massive evacuation via Dunkirk.

Stephen Clarke

#14. There is a class of tourists who never seem to see the things they're visiting, I thought. They prefer to look at directions to the next place they're not going to look at.

Stephen Clarke

#15. If they wanted their shit stirred, then stirred their shit was jolly well going to be.

Stephen Clarke

#16. Philippe also brought along musicians - mainly trumpeters and drummers - to scare the enemy. Even then, French music was known to terrify the English.

Stephen Clarke