A. N. Wilson

“I believe the collapse of the House of Windsor is tied in with the collapse of the Church of England.”

“I am shy to admit that I have followed the advice given all those years ago by a wise archbishop to a bewildered young man: that moments of unbelief 'don't matter,' that if you return to a practice of the faith, faith will return.”

“Since Einstein developed his theory of relativity, and Rutherford and Bohr revolutionised physics, our picture of the world has radically changed.”

“I had lost faith in biography.”

“When Christians start thinking about Jesus, things start breaking down, they lose their faith. It's perfectly possible to go to church every Sunday and not ask any questions, just because you like it as a way of life. They fear that if they ask questions they'll lose their Christ, the very linchpin of their religion.”

“In the past, I used to counter any such notions by asking myself: 'Would you really want President Hattersley?' I now find that possibility rather cheers me up. With his chubby, Dickensian features and his knowledge of T.H. Green and other harmless leftish political classics, Hattersley might not be such a bad thing after all.”

“Personally, I think universities are finished. So much rubbish gets taught.”

“If you read about Mussolini or Stalin or some of these other great monsters of history, they were at it all the time, that they were getting up in the morning very early. They were physically very active. They didn't eat lunch.”

“My kind publishers, Toby Mundy and Margaret Stead of Atlantic Books, have commissioned me to write the life of Queen Victoria.”

“I don't think you can tell the objective truth about a person. That's why people write novels.”

“Everyone writes in Tolstoy's shadow, whether one feels oneself to be Tolstoyan or not.”

“Nearly all monster stories depend for their success on Jack killing the Giant, Beowulf or St. George slaying the Dragon, Harry Potter triumphing over the basilisk. That is their inner grammar, and the whole shape of the story leads towards it.”

“Truth comes to us mediated by human love.”

“It is eerie being all but alone in Westminster Abbey. Without the tourists, there are only the dead, many of them kings and queens. They speak powerfully and put my thoughts into vivid perspective.”

“The really clever people now want to be lawyers or journalists.”

“I've got nothing very original to say myself.”

“I should prefer to have a politician who regularly went to a massage parlour than one who promised a laptop computer for every teacher.”

“If you know somebody is going to be awfully annoyed by something you write, that's obviously very satisfying, and if they howl with rage or cry, that's honey.”

“Of all liars the most arrogant are biographers: those who would have us believe, having surveyed a few boxes full of letters, diaries, bank statements and photographs, that they can play at the recording angel and tell the whole truth about another human life.”

“IQ in general has improved since tests first began. Psychologists think that this is because modern life becomes ever more complicated.”