Daniel Kemp > Quotes

“There is no morality to be found in evil.
But to recognise that which is truly evil one must forget the rules of morality.”
― Daniel Kemp, The Desolate Garden

“If one totally accepts reality as being the only physical concept then one is denying the existence of imagination.”
― Daniel Kemp

“There is nothing as stale as an empty mind.”
― Daniel Kemp

“It’s not that I don’t write fairy stories because I don’t believe in fairies. I don’t write fairy stories because fairies don’t like me.”
― Daniel Kemp

“The man who spreads hatred will become hated but it doesn’t follow that the man who spreads love will be loved. He will become despised because there are more that hate than love.”
― Daniel Kemp

“The value of any written work should not simply be judged on the words that can be read. It should also be judged on the memories it leaves in the heart.”
― Daniel Kemp

“I don’t charge for the words I write. I charge for joining them together.”
― Daniel Kemp

“There are easier ways to die than just live.”
― Daniel Kemp

“I'll tell you one thing, Sir. They're all the same, these politicians, no matter what colour they wear. Incapable of telling the truth and never did a day's work in their lives most Liberals, and all the Labour ones. Read about the lives of real people in books, but never experienced it.”
― Daniel Kemp, The Desolate Garden

“I've known you a very short time and although it's not always true about first impressions making the biggest impact, I don't think I'm wrong about you. Your trouble is women. Not just one but all of us! Love always lands at the wrong time of day for most, either we're too young, too busy in a career, or already married, but with you it doesn't land, it hovers over your head every day because you're looking for it. Stop trying to find it, Terry. Let it find you. And better still, take up that offer in Sleepy Hollow and have”
― Daniel Kemp, Once I Was A Soldier

“They like to associate themselves with the ordinary man, until it comes to peerages or jobs in Europe, earning astronomical money for themselves and their own. They're in it for the power and prestige it gives them; nothing else. Give me a man who creates opportunity any day, rather than one who wants to regulate us all and leave himself exempt.”
― Daniel Kemp, The Desolate Garden

“Look after your feet son, and they will carry you through life without complaint.” This was, perhaps, the only sensible advice he ever gave me.”
― Daniel Kemp, The Desolate Garden

“I did have a singular fear of being arrested for the transportation of a live skeleton on British Rail, for which I'm sure, there must be some law against in the lost journals of the Empire.”
― Daniel Kemp, The Desolate Garden

“The wind forgets. It will always forget as it never stays still long enough in one place for a memory to remain. A flame is the same. It flickers as though the memory is a painful one causing distress that needs evicting. It is only in that which is solid can a memory exist until it chiselled away by time. And there we have it; the longer we spend in reminiscing the more chance it is for the wind to extinguish the flame!

© 2017, Danny Kemp All rights reserved”
― Daniel Kemp

“There is a part of the pub, near one of the log fires, that had been christened 'The Worrier's Corner.' It was normally occupied by elderly pairings, discussing the woes of humankind today compared to their time, and their standards. Nothing was ever overheard emanating from that corner that was not better done, tasted, used or made in their days compared to today. Perhaps they were right in their collective refusal to participate in the righteous grind of progression, which can often seem onerous and exacting in the increasing anarchic society the elderly find themselves in.”
― Daniel Kemp, The Desolate Garden

“For a lie to add piquancy to a story the story would be factual. Fantasy needs no lie to stimulate or excite. But if the factual story is contrived or fallacious then it’s the fantasy that is the lie.”
― Daniel Kemp, The Desolate Garden

“I lose myself in the fiction I write in the same way I would lose myself as a younger man in the sport that I played and as I would lose myself as a child when playing childish games. My fiction provides all that is necessary for me to avoid the harshness of life.”
― Daniel Kemp

“Intellect counts for nothing if it doesn't wear a designer label.”
― Daniel Kemp

“Curiosity is a weapon of the modest
Indifference is a badge of the pompous.”
― Daniel Kemp

“Denounce private medical care, but where do they go for their health needs? Some dirty filthy NHS hospital where you have to be able to understand Swahili? I don't think so!”
― Daniel Kemp, The Desolate Garden

“equivalent of a”
― Daniel Kemp, What Happened In Vienna, Jack?

“It is better to write in order to find what you are than to write to find what price others put on you!”
― Daniel Kemp

“I'd missed it in the papers. Don't have much time for them, comic books the majority of them.”
― Daniel Kemp, The Desolate Garden

“God gave you a brain to use as well as a tongue, Frankie. Some people know more about what you're telling them than you think, so be careful what you say and to whom!”
― Daniel Kemp, Once I Was A Soldier

“She reminded me of a pink mannequin displayed in the windows of fashion shops, one of those minus zero size females who are advised to eat air for sustainability.”
― Daniel Kemp, The Desolate Garden

“I smelled of whiskey and tobacco; not the catch of the night, I supposed.”
― Daniel Kemp, The Desolate Garden