Simon Raven

I loved the Army as an institution and loathed every single thing it required me to do.

— Simon Raven

Scholarship was one thing, drudgery another. I very soon concluded that nothing would induce me to read, let alone make notes on,…

— Simon Raven

I wanted to look at the upper-middle-class scene since the war, and in particular my generation's part in it. We had spent…

— Simon Raven

And so, at the age of thirty, I had successively disgraced myself with three fine institutions, each of which had made me…

— Simon Raven

How can I go on with this? Please God, let me win a football pool.

— Simon Raven

Nobody minded what you did in bed or what you said about God, a very civilized attitude in 1948.

— Simon Raven

Gentlemen can now only behave as such, or be tolerated as such, in circumstances that are manifestly contrived or unreal.

— Simon Raven

“In becoming the universe God abdicated. He destroyed himself as God. He turned what he had been, his true self, into nullity…

— Simon Raven

... life is short and the world is wide

— Simon Raven

Art for art's sake, money for God's sake.

— Simon Raven

Since life is short and the world is wide, the sooner you start exploring it, the better.

— Simon Raven

“Dusk is the time when men whisper of matters about which they remain silent in the full light of the sun.”

— Simon Raven

Christ asked for everything he got.

— Simon Raven