Have you ever been to the countryside? It’s so small. And there’s nothing to do.
GILES CORENWe built walls around them with slits through which to fire arrows at scary, cross-eyed rural people, and brought our food and family inside because they were the safest places to be.
More Giles Coren Quotes
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Not since Ancient Greece have cities been thought of as the ideal living environment for humans. And that was so long ago it predates the invention of trousers.
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When I tell people I spent almost a year in Paris, I know they imagine something out of a Woody Allen movie, which it wasn’t, of course. I was just working in a clothes shop, but I was aware that it was exciting.
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World cross-fertilization is fantastic. Immigration across the world has led to all kinds of fantastic new and exciting kinds of food being available. And there’s all kinds of different kinds of restaurants.
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I tried to leave the city once, for one of those other places. And, my God, the silence. I could hear myself think, and found that I wasn’t. I am not designed to be lonely as a cloud.
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The first thing I remember is that my dad had a big iron Olivetti typewriter and he worked all night.
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I always feel quite Jewish but I used to deny it until I was in my twenties.
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Gentile smoked salmon is all… muscular and smells of smoke. It’s not very fatty. They don’t understand – smoked salmon should be almost spreadable! So you give them the real stuff and they can’t believe how delicious it is.
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My dad was very successful as a journalist, so I didn’t want to be one. I wanted to be a novelist.
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All I care about is that people who like me think I’m funny. I get on with writing pretty straight-down the line, old-fashioned stuff.
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Instant gratification is bringing this planet to its knees.
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There is nothing wrong with getting a bus. Nothing in any way demeaning about boarding a huge smelly communal vehicle that will rumble noisily and very slowly in the vague direction of the place you need to get to and then dump you half a mile away in the freezing wind and rain.
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How clever am I? I’m really quite clever. I mean, look, I’ve got a first-class degree from Oxford.
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As drivers desert the city I find myself clinging more and more to my father’s belief that a man without a car is not really a man.
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I had become mean and stupid and deliberately hurtful because that is what is expected of restaurant critics. Of critics in general.
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But still I can never shake the feeling that buses are somehow beneath me. Which is why I have a rule regarding their use: I never, ever run for one. And nor should you.
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