Simon Raven Quotes

Simon Raven — English Novelist born on December 28, 1927, died on May 12, 2001

Simon Arthur Noël Raven was an English novelist, essayist, dramatist and raconteur who, in a writing career of forty years, caused controversy, amusement and offence. His obituary in The Guardian noted that, "he combined elements of Flashman, Waugh's Captain Grimes and the Earl of Rochester", and that he reminded Noel Annan, his Cambridge tutor, of the young Guy Burgess... (wikipedia)

And so, at the age of thirty, I had successively disgraced myself with three fine institutions, each of which had made me free of its full and rich resources, had trained me with skill and patience, and had shown me nothing but forbearance and charity when I failed in trust.

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

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

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

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 our early years as privileged members of a privileged class. How were we faring in the Age of the Common Man? How ought we to be faring?

Simon Raven Quotes

Login with