A biography for A. N. Wilsonhasn’t been written yet.
“The death of any man aged 56 is very sad for his widow and family. And no one would deny that Steve Jobs was a brilliant and highly innovative technician, with great business flair and marketing ability.”
“Watching a whole cluster of friends, and my own mother, die over quite a short space of time convinced me that purely materialist 'explanations' for our mysterious human existence simply won't do - on an intellectual level.”
“People become dons because they are incapable of doing anything else in life.”
“I'm boring. My beliefs are neither here nor there.”
“When I think about atheist friends, including my father, they seem to me like people who have no ear for music, or who have never been in love.”
“Anti-Semitism is extremely common.”
“I suppose if I'd got a brilliant first and done research I might still be a don today, but I hope not. People become dons because they are incapable of doing anything else in life.”
“Reading about Queen Victoria has been a passion of mine since, as a child, I came across Laurence Housman's play 'Happy and Glorious,' with its Ernest Shepard illustrations.”
“The fact that logic cannot satisfy us awakens an almost insatiable hunger for the irrational.”
“I wanted passionately to be a priest.”
“I don't write books inadvertently.”
“Tennyson seems to be the patron saint of the wishy washies, which is perhaps why I admire him so much, not only as a poet, but as a man.”
“If you imagine writing 1,000 words a day, which most journalists do, that would be a very long book a year. I don't manage nearly that... but I have published slightly too much recently.”
“It seems astonishing to be paid for indulging in pure pleasure. For me to go to Coburg is rather as if a trainspotter was sent for a few weeks to Swindon or a chocoholic asked on holiday by Green and Black.”
“It is the woman - nearly always - in spite of all the advances of modern feminism, who still takes responsibility for the bulk of the chores, as well as doing her paid job. This is true even in households where men try to be unselfish and to do their share.”
“I think I became a Catholic to annoy my father.”
“I'm like Jane Austen - I work on the corner of the dining table.”
“A busybody's work is never done.”
“The Royal Family are not like you and me. They live in houses so big that you can walk round all day and never need to meet your spouse. The Queen and Prince Philip have never shared a bedroom in their lives. They don't even have breakfast together.”
“I think one of the very frightening things about the regime of the National Socialists is that it made people happy.”