Malcolm Bradbury

If God had been a liberal, we wouldn't have had the Ten Commandments - we'd have the Ten Suggestions.

Culture is a way of coping with the world by defining it in detail.

The English are polite by telling lies. The Americans are polite by telling the truth.

It took me realizing that a broken heart has never actually killed anyone to find the courage to ask for what I want, in just about every situation. That was part of my own growing up.

Recently, I was in Bernalda, my dad's ancestral home town in Italy. He has just refurbished a palazzo and turned it into a hotel, so we had my sister's wedding there. It was beautiful.

I was writing poetry, and the Mountain Goats was an outgrowth of that.