Tom Sharpe > Quotes

“Do go on,' he said. 'There's nothing I enjoy more than listening to a highly trained intelligence leapfrogging common sense and coming to the wrong conclusions. It gives me renewed faith in parliamentary democracy.”
― Tom Sharpe, Wilt On High

“The man who said the pen was mightier than the sword ought to have tried reading "The Mill on the Floss" to Motor Mechanics.”
― Tom Sharpe, Wilt

“The number of choirboys indecently assaulted annually by vicars and churchwardens may lead you to suppose that England is a deeply religious country. I”
― Tom Sharpe, The Wilt Alternative

“While he lived a violent life in his imagination, Eva, lacking any imagination at all, lived violently in fact.”
― Tom Sharpe, Wilt

“By shooting your cook you were refusing him permission to enter your house.”
― Tom Sharpe, Riotous Assembly

“-T'has de sentir lliure. Lliure, lliure! -és el que Sally havia dit.
-Lliure! Per a ésser què? -preguntà Eva.
-El teu propi jo, el teu jo secret. -li digué Sally a cau d'orella.”
― Tom Sharpe, Wilt

“La doctora von Blimenstein había convencido al pobre hombre de que sus temores tenían un origen puramente sexual y eran consecuencia de una sensación de desajuste provocada por la idea de que su pene no era tan largo ni tan potente como una pitón adulta y le había enviado de nuevo a trabajar en el serpentario, donde, tres semanas después, le había mordido, esta vez con fatales consecuencias, una mamba negra cuya longitud intentaba él comparar con la de su propio miembro erecto, el cual sabía que alcanzaba los dieciocho centímetros de longitud. «Treinta y cinco centímetros», acababa de deducir, apoyando la cabeza de la mamba contra su glans penis. Fue prácticamente lo último que pudo decir, pues la mamba, con ferocidad plenamente justificada por la absurda comparación, hundió los colmillos en su contrapartida simbólica. Tras lo cual, la doctora von Blimenstein se había apartado del psicoanálisis y se había decidido por un enfoque más conductista.”
― Tom Sharpe, Riotous Assembly

“Eva Wilt got to her feet and stood with the rain running down her face and as she stood there the illusions that had sustained her through the week disappeared. She saw herself as a fat, silly woman who had left her husband in pursuit of a glamour that was false and shoddy and founded on brittle talk and money.”
― Tom Sharpe, Wilt

“the authorities had gone on to inculcate their own classless ideals into students whose presence at the University was in itself a measure of their determination to climb the social ladder by the only means made available in the Welfare State.”
― Tom Sharpe, Ancestral Vices

“Liberal studies means..." said Mrs Chatterway, who prided herself on being an advocate of progressive education, in which role she had made a substantial contribution to the illiteracy rate in several previously good primary schools.”
― Tom Sharpe, Wilt

“Una cosa era demoler media docena de casas y echar a las familias que vivían en ellas, y otra muy diferente privar a diez leones, cuatro jirafas, un rinoceronte y una docena de avestruces de su único medio de vida. La opinión pública británica jamás consentiría la menor crueldad contra unos animalitos.”
― Tom Sharpe, Blott on the Landscape

“couldn’t lose. The main thing was to see that the tunnel scheme was scotched. Sir Giles parked outside the Handyman Arms, went inside and sent a message up to Dundridge’s room to say that Sir Giles Lynchwood was looking forward to his company in the lounge. Dundridge went downstairs”
― Tom Sharpe, Blott On The Landscape

“Fifty miles away, Lord Lynchknowle’s dinner had been interrupted by the arrival of a police car and the news of his daughter’s death. The fact that it had come between the mackerel pâté and the game pie, and on the wine side, an excellent Montrachet and a Château Lafite 1962, several bottles of which he’d opened to impress the Home Secretary and two old friends from the Foreign Office, particularly annoyed him. Not that he intended to let the news spoil his meal by announcing it before he’d finished, but he could foresee an ugly episode with his wife afterwards for no better reason than that he had come back to the table with the rather unfortunate remark that it was nothing important. Of course, he could always excuse himself on the grounds that hospitality came first, and old Freddie was the Home Secretary after all, and he wasn’t going to let that Lafite ’62 go to waste, but somehow he knew Hilary was going to kick up the devil of a fuss about it afterwards.”
― Tom Sharpe, Wilt On High

“Certainty was essential to him and the written word had a certainty about it that everything else in life lacked.”
― Tom Sharpe, Grantchester Grind

“Zipser's attempts to mollify him by explaining that Durham was a university and that there had been a Durham College in Oxford in 1380 had failed hopelessly. If anything, the mention of Oxford had increased Skullion's antipathy.”
― Tom Sharpe, Porterhouse Blue

“No, you can forget their going anywhere.”
― Tom Sharpe, Wilt

“Meditó durante la hora de Reafirmación de Género para Mujeres Maduras, ninguna de las cuales necesitaba que le enseñaran a reafirmarse a sí misma. De hecho se reafirmaban tan estupendamente que lo único que tenía que hacer Wilt era dejar que hablaran.”
― Tom Sharpe, Wilt in Nowhere

“Afirmaba que era una abominación y se empeñaba en referise a la corrección política como la destrucción del idioma”
― Tom Sharpe, The Wilt Inheritance

“El hecho es que el ordenador está aquí para quedarse y los niños saben utilizarlo y nosotros no. Incluso el lenguaje.”
― Tom Sharpe, Wilt On High

“Estaba asombrado de que le hubiera resultado tan fácil. Lo único que tenía que hacer era decirle a la gente lo que la gente quería oír, y te creían, por muy absurda que pudiera ser la historia que les explicaras. Y tres días y tres noches sin dormir habían aletargado los recelos y la capacidad de escepticismo del inspector Flint.”
― Tom Sharpe, Wilt