Bruce Robinson > Quotes

“We are indeed drifting into the arena of the unwell.”
― Bruce Robinson, Withnail and I: the Original Screenplay

“Those with the money are eccentric. Those without, insane.”
― Bruce Robinson, Withnail and I: the Original Screenplay

“I don't advise a haircut, man. All hairdressers are in the employment of the government. Hairs are your aerials. They pick up signals from the cosmos, and transmit them directly into the brain. This is the reason bald-headed men are uptight.”
― Bruce Robinson, Withnail and I: the Original Screenplay

“Dostoyevsky described hell as perhaps nothing more than a room with a chair in it. This room has several chairs. A young man sits in one.”
― Bruce Robinson, Withnail and I: the Original Screenplay

“We've gone on holiday by mistake”
― Bruce Robinson, Withnail and I: the Original Screenplay

“Balls. We want the finest wines available to humanity. And we want them here. And we want them now.”
― Bruce Robinson, Withnail and I: the Original Screenplay

“He didn't like religion, hadn't liked it for years, but he adored churches, loved them like old scientific instruments whose time is long past but are nevertheless fascinating and strange.”
― Bruce Robinson, The Peculiar Memories of Thomas Penman

“When you see a giant, make sure it isn't a dwarf standing in a favourable light. Thus we approach 'the mystery of Jack the Ripper.”
― Bruce Robinson, They All Love Jack: Busting the Ripper

“You don't have to be "insane" to cut people up, no matter how fiendishly you do it. You just have to hate enough.”
― Bruce Robinson, They All Love Jack: Busting the Ripper

“You have done something to your brain. You have made it high. If I lay 10 mls of diazepam on you, it will do something else to your brain. You will make it low. Why trust one drug and not the other?”
― Bruce Robinson, Withnail and I: the Original Screenplay

“Here. Hare. Here. Here hare here!”
― Bruce Robinson, Withnail and I: the Original Screenplay

“But this time of the year she was in her vaults, underground, and here she resided alone, spending most of her life in darkness, like a tongue”
― Bruce Robinson, The Peculiar Memories of Thomas Penman

“Withnail: This is ridiculous. Look at me, I'm 30 in a month and I've got a sole flapping off my shoe.

Marwood: It'll get better, it has to.

Withnail: Easy for you to say, luvvie, you've had an audition. Why can't I have an audition? It's ridiculous. I've been to drama school. I'm good looking. I tell you, I've a fuck sight more talent that half the rubbish that gets on television. Why can't I get on television?

Marwood: Well, I don't know. It'll happen.

Withnail: Will it? That's what you say. The only programme I'm likely to get on is the fucking news.”
― Bruce Robinson, Withnail and I: the Original Screenplay

“Concealing the Ripper was not a Masonic conspiracy, but a conspiracy of Her Majesty's executive, who almost without exception were Freemasons. In other words, it was a conspiracy of the System.”
― Bruce Robinson, They All Love Jack: Busting the Ripper

“The Ripper was smart, but not that smart. It is simply an insult to the Victorian police to believe that detectives like Moore, Reid & Abberline couldn't have caught this prick in their sleep.”
― Bruce Robinson, They All Love Jack: Busting the Ripper

“Reactionary nostalgia for the proprieties of Victorian England is unfortunate, like a whore looking under the bed for her virginity.”
― Bruce Robinson, They All Love Jack

“During the Second World War there was an interrogator for Army Counter-Intelligence by the name of Lieutenant Colonel Oreste Pinto. It was his task to break the cover of enemy spies, and he’s one of my weirder heroes. In 1942 Pinto had a man at the other side of his desk who instinct told him had to be an enemy agent. Before arriving at the Colonel’s office (just off The Strand in central London), this suspect had been through many searing investigations and survived them all. Notwithstanding that, the authorities continued to harbour suspicions; but nobody could break him. So what did Pinto think? Pinto interrogated his man over a period of days. The suspect had an impeccable Oxford accent, excellent socio-geographic knowledge, backed up by documentation that was as good as it gets. Down to the last little parochial nuance, he had an answer for everything, and seemed totally and utterly kosher. Even so, Pinto was convinced he was dealing with an exceptionally talented spy whose true provenance was Berlin. But he couldn’t crack him, so he invited him out to lunch. Ten minutes later they were walking up The Strand, about to cross it to go to the chosen restaurant when, as they stepped off the kerb, Pinto screamed, ‘Look out!’ – and he got his German because the bastard looked the wrong way. ‘We drive on the left in England, old boy.”
― Bruce Robinson, They All Love Jack: Busting the Ripper

“The house was full of relatives and poison, undercurrents camouflaged with cosmetic mirth.”
― Bruce Robinson, Peculiar Memories of Thomas Penman

“spending most of her life in darkness, like a tongue.”
― Bruce Robinson, Peculiar Memories of Thomas Penman

“I have learned to loathe much of what was the Victorian governing class. Wealth was a deity in Victorian England, and everything was subservient to the maintenance of it.”
― Bruce Robinson, They All Love Jack: Busting the Ripper

“Twenty-five thousand black bears a year were slaughtered to make hats for the British Army, and fashionable London ladies liked their hummingbirds skinned alive, a technique which apparently added lustre to the chapeau.”
― Bruce Robinson, They All Love Jack: Busting the Ripper

“Dogs can’t see in colour, and psychos can’t see in human.”
― Bruce Robinson, They All Love Jack: Busting the Ripper

“The Government will go to all lengths to secure convictions of the men it wishes to punish just as it will go to all lengths to shield the men that it desires shall escape punishment.”
― Bruce Robinson, They All Love Jack

“In here were the six toothbrushes of the residents and an egg-coloured carpet with a known verruca.”
― Bruce Robinson, The Peculiar Memories of Thomas Penman

“What was your favourite line in the movie?' Well I liked 'We've gone on holiday by mistake.' But my favourite line is 'I feel unusual.' Which made me laugh out loud when I wrote the line. I had this old Olivetti which I used to work on in the kitchen in Camden Town... and, uh... It was such fun writing this because... 'cause I didn't give a fuck. It wasn't like I... you know, later on someone's actually paying you to write something. Its much harder in a way, you know, because they've put the dough up... so you care more and you're more anxious about it. With Withnail and I I was just writing my life at the time, uh, and having a good laugh.”
― Bruce Robinson

“WITHNAIL: We’re about a yard from London, and going up a hill! Now, for Christ’s sake, stop this crate and let me out.”
― Bruce Robinson, Withnail and I