Craig Taylor > Quotes

“There's only one London. That's it. We are what we are.”
― Craig Taylor, Londoners: The Days and Nights of London Now - As Told by Those Who Love It, Hate It, Live It, Left It, and Long for It

“Live your life in any way, London says. It encourages defiance. I loved what it gave me, who it allowed me to be. On the nights I could afford a minicab home, I rolled down the window while crossing the river and watched the lights on the water, knowing most late-night minicabbers were reaffirming their love of London with the same view. I loved its messiness, its attempts at order. I loved the anonymity it afforded;”
― Craig Taylor, Londoners: The Days and Nights of London Now - As Told by Those Who Love It, Hate It, Live It, Left It, and Long for It

“I just like to say I'm from London, I don't have any specific area I represent. I'm not representing for a small group of people. I'd like everybody to be able to relate to a nerd, because everybody's a bit nerdy. I'm more interested in that than in where they're from. I'm more interested in what people do.”
― Craig Taylor

“Live your life in any way, London says. It encourages defiance. I loved what it gave me, who it allowed me to be.”
― Craig Taylor, Londoners: The Days and Nights of London Now - As Told by Those Who Love It, Hate It, Live It, Left It, and Long for It

“I’ve always found that if you live in a cramped place, you have cramped thoughts.”
― Craig Taylor, Londoners: The Days and Nights of London Now--As Told by Those Who Love It, Hate It, Live It, Left It, and Long for It

“But you are losing money every day you are here. It's always that thing: if I hang in here just a little bit longer, things may happen.
(...)
No matter what you want to do in London, there's a million others who are in the queue ahead of you. Everything is always a hassle, because there is just so many people wanting to do the same shit at the same time. No matter what it is. And no matter what cool idea you've had, there's somebody else who's already done it. And they're usually younger, richer and more well-connected than you.
(...)
London is like any other kind of addiction, really. You get 5 per cent entertainment out of it, and that makes you suffer through the other 95 per cent of it.”
― Craig Taylor, Londoners: The Days and Nights of London Now - As Told by Those Who Love It, Hate It, Live It, Left It, and Long for It

“London meant a new beginning, a hell-hole, a wonderland; too big, too foul; a safety blanket, point of pride, unfortunate problem, temporary mattress location, salvation, life's work. A place to stack empty tins of lager. Stage, Mecca, my water, my oxygen. London as cell, jail and favour.”
― Craig Taylor, Londoners: The Days and Nights of London Now - As Told by Those Who Love It, Hate It, Live It, Left It, and Long for It

“The only thing that is truly Londonish about London is that it's all bits and pieces of everybody else.”
― Craig Taylor, Londoners: The Days and Nights of London Now - As Told by Those Who Love It, Hate It, Live It, Left It, and Long for It

“There's this thing you're supposed to be part of in London. But what is it? That's the million-dollar question. Everyone's there because they're searching, aspiring. A very small percentage is actually living the dream. Ill, tired, unhappy, the rent is fucking loads, what is it you're getting? The idea of it, or something.”
― Craig Taylor

“If you are not sharing with each other, talking with each other, what do you have?”
― Craig Taylor, Londoners: The Days and Nights of London Now - As Told by Those Who Love It, Hate It, Live It, Left It, and Long for It

“In London, “I know the answer” was never as exciting as “I’m not sure but I may have found a way.”
― Craig Taylor, Londoners: The Days and Nights of London Now--As Told by Those Who Love It, Hate It, Live It, Left It, and Long for It

“At the bottom of the poster was the famous Samuel Johnson quote I’ve now heard repeated, mangled, and paraphrased many times: “When a man is tired of London he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.”
― Craig Taylor, Londoners: The Days and Nights of London Now--As Told by Those Who Love It, Hate It, Live It, Left It, and Long for It

“Living history is thrilling, especially in an eloquent city, in a talkative town, in a place where people fought to get here, fought to stay here, fought to get out.”
― Craig Taylor, Londoners: The Days and Nights of London Now--As Told by Those Who Love It, Hate It, Live It, Left It, and Long for It

“All the things that have happened to you, all them years. Where you've been and who you've been with. All the different people I've met. I always seem to get on with them. If I see people I always talk to people. That's just what I do.”
― Craig Taylor, Londoners: The Days and Nights of London Now - As Told by Those Who Love It, Hate It, Live It, Left It, and Long for It

“My wife always says she’d love to live in the countryside. I like the idea of escaping all the nonsense of London, but you know what? My heart and soul are here in the city, really. So I think that’s where I’ll always be.”
― Craig Taylor, Londoners: The Days and Nights of London Now - As Told by Those Who Love It, Hate It, Live It, Left It, and Long for It

“But Akenfield did not bow to sentimental ideas of the countryside as idyll. Blythe’s villagers spoke too of the brutality of country life, and of hopes to escape the village. Their lives were a complex mix of wide-open spaces and limited opportunities. As Blythe later remarked, ‘I think my view of human life is how brief and curious most people’s lives are. Yet when you come to talk to them you realize how strong they are and how unbelievably rich their lives are; also subtle and various.”
― Craig Taylor, Return To Akenfield: Portrait Of An English Village In The 21st Century

“London as cell, jail, and favor. London meant “not living in England while living in England,”
― Craig Taylor, Londoners: The Days and Nights of London Now--As Told by Those Who Love It, Hate It, Live It, Left It, and Long for It

“When you do a departure along the northerly from Gatwick, you get a real sense of humanity. As you climb out over the city, you can see masses of people down there, all the buildings and all the built-up area are lit up. And at night-time you’ve got the M25, which circles London, and you can see all these little beady lights that are dotted around in a very windy circle and you realize that it’s six o’clock around the M25. Day by day they’re down there and you just think of the effort, all the effort, just to get by. It’s a tough city. All those little dots, those beads of light, like a rosary, all those people, wanting to get in, wanting to get out.”
― Craig Taylor, Londoners: The Days and Nights of London Now - As Told by Those Who Love It, Hate It, Live It, Left It, and Long for It

“I’m hated. I work in finance. I wear a collection of terrible ties. My work is constant. If I describe it in any detail, I will literally have to fall asleep, I will just have to put my head down on the table and sleep and hopefully dream of another kind of job, a job where I never once have to say the word “mortgage.”
― Craig Taylor, Londoners: The Days and Nights of London Now--As Told by Those Who Love It, Hate It, Live It, Left It, and Long for It

“I love roundabouts. I absolutely think they're the best invention, and I don't care who invented the pen, the biro; whoever invented the roundabout, they should be up there on that plinth that they've got going on in Trafalgar Square. You can have a little bit of fun with it, you know. Will I go? Will I not go? The other car might go in my lane. There's a bit of a dance going. It's like a samba. Because in this city, sometimes you just come to a sudden gridlock and you think, well I'm waiting for him, he's waiting for me, he's waiting for him, and you've got everyone looking at everyone—who will make the first move? And you begin to move and he begins to move and then you stop, and everyone's being really polite. But every day you get somebody who just doesn't care, a young lad and he doesn't give a monkey's.”
― Craig Taylor

“expectations. So the labor force coming from the east is”
― Craig Taylor, Londoners: The Days and Nights of London Now--As Told by Those Who Love It, Hate It, Live It, Left It, and Long for It

“I miss the freedom of London. I do miss the mixture. I think I will go back sometime with Alexandra and show her the city. She will understand why I went. And perhaps why I came back.”
― Craig Taylor, Londoners: The Days and Nights of London Now - As Told by Those Who Love It, Hate It, Live It, Left It, and Long for It

“On the subway I felt I had a secret knowledge - I probably wasn’t the only one - a secret reason to travel, knowing that this exercise was ultimately for me, all these encounters brought with them lessons on how to live. And also how to shut up. In these years of increasing volume I had so many great reasons to stay quiet and bear witness.”
― Craig Taylor, New Yorkers: A City and Its People in Our Time

“We don’t really have a staff room. We do have one, but … it’s freezing in there. So at lunch times we sit down there with the children. We’re always around, so the relationships are very different. You don’t often hear raised voices here.”
― Craig Taylor, Return To Akenfield: Portrait Of An English Village In The 21st Century

“London is actually a beautiful place when the weather's good; the mood is lighter and everybody's smiling. But for the other 350 days a year, it's miserable. You're standing there waiting for the bus in the rain or you're waiting for a train on a platform and it's freezing. Always a persistent drizzle - or if it's not drizzling, it's overcast and cold.”
― Craig Taylor, Londoners: The Days and Nights of London Now - As Told by Those Who Love It, Hate It, Live It, Left It, and Long for It