Jean Ure > Quotes

“Right! You’ve said it . . . that’s what we elect governments for. To save ourselves the trouble of having to think. Well, we got what was coming to us! You duck out of all responsibility, you forfeit all right to scream when the balloon goes up . . . we’re like a load of kids! Silly little kids, playing in our playpens, while out there the psychopaths lay trails of dynamite and run around with lighted matches telling us it’s all as safe as houses and all for our own good, and still we say, oh, we must have leaders! There’s got to be someone in charge, someone to make the decisions, we can’t do it! In any other circumstances that would be labelled immaturity. We sit here and call it democracy!”
― Jean Ure, Plague 99

“To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labour”.”
― Jean Ure, Come Lucky April

“Why else do you think the world destroyed itself?’ ‘It was an accident!’ ‘Yes, and who caused the accident? Men!”
― Jean Ure, Come Lucky April

“It was true that up until the end of the twentieth century it was men who wielded most of the power. This is undeniable. What cannot be readily ascertained is why this should have been so. Was it, as some have maintained, that from the dawn of history might was right and the physically stronger sex gained ascendancy over the weaker? Or was it, as others have claimed, that women’s horizons were narrower than men’s, thus by their very nature keeping them within the more limited confines of home and family?”
― Jean Ure, Come Lucky April

“Sick humour to go with a sick world. What was wrong with that?”
― Jean Ure, Plague 99

“Men weren’t very humane.’ ‘All right, so sometimes maybe some of them weren’t! Does that make it acceptable for women to be inhumane in their turn?”
― Jean Ure, Come Lucky April

“He had never hit a woman in his life, but there were some women who asked for it.”
― Jean Ure, Come Lucky April

“She didn’t want to be miserable; no one wanted to be miserable. There were times when you just couldn’t help it.”
― Jean Ure, Come Lucky April

“One had to be prepared for the thought that the world might actually be approaching Armageddon.”
― Jean Ure, Plague 99

“It is true, I do expect bad things rather than good, and even when they are good I worry about when they will stop being good.”
― Jean Ure, Plague 99

“Where would you intellectuals be without us lower grade morons to lead you around? Totally lost, that’s where!”
― Jean Ure, Come Lucky April

“It’s our job to look at the issues and elect people. Once we’ve done that, that’s our part over with. It’s not up to us to run the country.”
― Jean Ure, Plague 99

“I almost wish that anyone were here, so I could just talk about anything. I know Harry used to accuse me of being anti-social (because of my not liking parties and shutting myself away painting), but it is a very dreadful and isolating experience not to have exchanged one single word with another human being for as long as I have.”
― Jean Ure, Plague 99

“It was so hard to decide where loyalties should lie: with oneself or with one’s community?”
― Jean Ure, Come Lucky April

“I know that almost all of my family are dead: I know that most of the people I have ever known are dead: I know that society has ceased to function . . . no hospitals, no doctors, no police . . . no transport, no broadcasting . . . no newspapers . . . no heating, no lighting . . . even in wartime, that doesn’t happen. But it’s happened now. This time they’ve really done it. So don’t ask me what I know! I know what you know, and if you don’t know it’s the end—”
― Jean Ure, Plague 99

“But basing a whole philosophy of life on what you would do in extremis does not seem to me to be right.”
― Jean Ure, Plague 99

“Almost as if—as if he regretted that they were civilised. As if he knew that they had to be, but wished it wasn’t necessary. Or that there was some other way.”
― Jean Ure, Come Lucky April

“(I don’t believe that dreams tell what is to come, I think they are the things that are going on in our subconscious swimming to the surface while we are asleep.)”
― Jean Ure, Plague 99

“To think that men and women had actually had sex together—had actually done things. Or, rather, men had done things. It was the men who did them, the women who had them done. Men who had the pleasure, women all the suffering.”
― Jean Ure, Come Lucky April

“A vendetta till the end of time?”
― Jean Ure, Come Lucky April

“Old people needn’t think they deserved respect just because they were old.”
― Jean Ure, Come Lucky April

“You never knew when condoms might come in handy . . . you could blow them up like balloons and tie messages to them, or fill them with water, or roll them on to your fingers and use them as fingerstalls. He didn’t really foresee any possibility of their being put to the purpose for which they were intended.”
― Jean Ure, Plague 99

“It seems so silly, everyone avoiding everyone. We are all just terrified, I suppose. But what is it that we are terrified of? Are we terrified of catching the disease or are we terrified of being knifed or strangled?”
― Jean Ure, Plague 99

“Let me tell you that male aggression is something we cannot afford to have unleashed upon the world a second time! Men cannot control their baser instincts. They have to be controlled for us. The power of the male is a force for evil, bringing destruction on the world.”
― Jean Ure, Come Lucky April

“I have discovered that writing is rather like talking: it is very difficult to start, but once you have actually got going it can also be very difficult to stop. The reason I don’t want to stop is that I am scared of being on my own. At least when I’m writing this journal it’s like conversing with someone.”
― Jean Ure, Plague 99

“There was a world out there, if only he had the courage to go and look for it.”
― Jean Ure, Come Lucky April

“Bloody right I feel I’m entitled to express an opinion! What’s going on here is a crime against humanity! What the hell do these women think they’re playing at? Trying to rewrite history? Make it into her-story?”
― Jean Ure, Come Lucky April

“Who needed excuses? It was each man for himself. It always had been, of course, that was the philosophy the world lived by; but now more so than ever.”
― Jean Ure, Plague 99

“I don’t want to be intelligent! I want to enjoy myself.”
― Jean Ure, Come Lucky April

“They’re happy.’ ‘Yes, like animals . . . mindlessly!”
― Jean Ure, Come Lucky April