Paul Cornell Quotes & Sayings
Enjoy the top 47 famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Paul Cornell.
Famous Quotes By Paul Cornell
In this place, upwards of 400,000
British men were going to be killed. They'd lost 20,000
just the other day. He sucked a grim smile. It was like
rich countries deliberately killing themselves, leaving
their battered remains ready for the revolution that would surely come, for who could return home without
wanting to face those who had wasted good men thus? — Paul Cornell
I scrubbed my door", said Judith, "with every magical cleansing agent I could think of. And Cillit Bang! — Paul Cornell
The telemarketers who called her up now seemed either desperate or resigned to the point of a mindless drone, until Judith, who had time on her hands and ice in her heart, engaged them in dark conversations that always got her removed from their lists. — Paul Cornell
I don't keep things safe. I used to. Perhaps. I can't keep all the plates spinning. I drop some." ... "Well, that is always the risk, if you're a plate, isn't it? If you want to be spun, then you must accept the possibility of being broken. — Paul Cornell
Judith realised, with horror, that they were heading over to talk to her, and couldn't find, at a quick glance, anyone else she knew well enough to get into a conversation with. There were, just occasionally, drawbacks to being a nasty old bitch. — Paul Cornell
Hell is where time has stopped, where there's no more innovation. No horizon. No change. I sometimes think Hell would suit the British down to the ground, and that, given the chance, they'd vote for it. — Paul Cornell
I don't think [Russell T Davies] sits up at night worrying about canonicity, except for the times when I'm pretty sure he does. — Paul Cornell
There's a word people in business use a lot: disruptive. The market can never be stable, the best it can be is falling apart in useful ways. Like the universe in general, really. To disrupt the market in your favour is now seen as being the ultimate achievement. Create a climate of absolute uncertainty, continual fear about enormous change, and you'll see people's . . . well, I was about to say 'true selves,' but they don't really have true selves, they're continually falling apart too . . . you'll see people concentrate on looking after themselves and their own, grabbing for familiar symbols. The right . . . brands, shall we say, can prosper hugely then, in the ultimate disruption. — Paul Cornell
After the three of them got back to the Portakabin, while Quill and Ross started to add the details from the manuscript pages to the Ops Board, Sefton got out his special notebook and checked through everything he'd written down about his encounter with ... whatever Brutus had been. I was proceeding in a mystical direction when I encountered a six-foot-two Roman male, with whom I shared a certain sexual tension. — Paul Cornell
He's like fire and ice and rage. He's like the night, and the storm in the heart of the sun. He's ancient and forever. He burns at the center of time and he can see the turn of the universe. And ... he's wonderful. - Tim Latimer — Paul Cornell
Tara: So what does "Captain Britain's agent" actually do?
Wisdom: Between you and me, Tara, it's work, work, work. I'm in charge of Brian's hair. — Paul Cornell
John the Skrull: You say you've taken magic? Well all right, lads, all right. I could do the "Spartacus" thing, change into one of you, get lost among you. Live for five more minutes. But you know what? I'm not going to die looking like you! I don't want to be one of the fascists who made my people into morons! Who took something beautiful like Excalibur here and made it into just.. a.. bit of metal. — Paul Cornell
He'd actually done it! He leaned back into the microphone and whispered to the now silent cave: 'Come to the Cabaret! — Paul Cornell
But the Fear (that sensation that all writers get of how the hell do words get from my puny little brain to into a book, and isn't magic somehow involved, and surely I'm not qualified to be involved in any part of that process, and I somehow managed that tomorrow, but you mean I have to do it this morning too, well how do I even start?) withdraws quite a bit when it's already light and lovely outside when I get to my desk. So I got right past that big moment today, and into the fun slide down towards the ending, yelling whee. — Paul Cornell
John Smith: Mankind doesn't need warfare and bloodshed to prove itself. Everyday life can provide honour and valour. Let's hope that from now on this country can find its heroes in smaller places. In the most ordinary of deeds. — Paul Cornell
People call love sickness heartache, but that's not where you feel rejection. Your heart only responds to excitement and fear - racing, pounding, skipping beats. You feel rejection in the pit of your stomach. It's like the moment you realise you've eaten bad food, and you know that all you've got to look forward to is a night of twisted torment and twisted sheets. — Paul Cornell
Rumpty! he muttered, which was very rude if you were one of the few people in the universe who understood what it meant. — Paul Cornell
Lizzie had come to understand that Sue's mission in life was to say the things that she, or indeed anyone else, wouldn't or couldn't. — Paul Cornell
Captain Midlands: "I met the real you once."
John (Lennon) the Skrull: "You're meeting the real me now."
Captain Midlands: "I told him to get his bleedin' hair cut. — Paul Cornell
Stories are about endings,' he'd said. 'They don't mean anything unless they come to an end. — Paul Cornell
To human beings it won't look or feel like a war, it'll be more like ... one of those modernist paintings you lot do, if it melted. Inside all your brains. Forever. — Paul Cornell
The idea of parts of the body public fighting each other was like the idea of a man's punching himself in the face. It was a physical blasphemy that suited this era as an index of how far it had all gone. — Paul Cornell
(On Captain Britain) Every British person thinks he's got the same accent as them. The air around him is warm like a summer meadow. He smells of honey. I've seen grown men weep at the sight of him. — Paul Cornell
John the Skrull: (as Merlyn) "Here, listen. It's me, Merlyn, the magic man. There's no need for all this conflict, like. I command you to
"
Tink: "Suck my tits, you fairy fuckers!"
John the Skrull: "I was going to say 'give peace a chance' ... — Paul Cornell
What's retaliate?" asked Aphasia.
"It means, kill most of the enemy, and let the survivors apologies. — Paul Cornell
DI Cartwright: The cat is booby trapped? DI Quill: Welcome to my world. — Paul Cornell
Sometimes love creeps upon me, and I suddenly sort of just realise that it's there when i start shaving my legs every day and singing on my bicycle. — Paul Cornell
(The Skrull Beatles discuss their future.)
"So when this is all over, are we still gonna be the Skrull Beatles then?"
"I quite fancy being the Skrull Monkees for a bit."
"The dialogue's easier."
"As long as I get to be Peter Tork. — Paul Cornell
You hear stories like that all your life and think: cool, a ghost bus. But now we have to look at this stuff analytically ... a ghost bus?! The "ghost" of a motor vehicle? A public conveyance, presumably, which didn't head towards the light, move on to join the choir invisible in ... bus heaven, the great terminus in the sky, where all good buses go when they ... I don't know, break down, but instead is doomed to ... drive eternally the streets of Earth! How can there be a ghost bus?! — Paul Cornell
John: I'm experiencing an odd sensation. I think it might be patriotism.
Spitfire: Steady. Too much of that can damage your health. — Paul Cornell
As Lizzie had seen so many times with victims, the harder your life had been, the harder it was to give yourself room for ethical choices. So were born cycles of abuse. — Paul Cornell
Wisdom: Mate, we're up to our necks in Skrulls! But we remembered the treaty: mutual protection. Here we are! Now, I've lost a couple of people I care about in quick succession, and I am taking no more bollocks from you. I've got this voice in my head, it's half Gandalf and half Mr. Kipling. Who is that?!
Oberon: A VOICE?! YOU MUST NOT FOLLOW IT! IT'S THE MAD ONE, THE DEMON WHO KILLED HIS OWN CHILD AND LED EVERYONE TO DESTRUCTION! THE HIGHER EVOLUTIONARIES OF ALL THE WORLDS HAVE ONLY JUST SUCCEEDED IN CONFINING HIM TO THE DARK REALMS!
Wisdom: Oh. Right. Him. Well, I'm gonna stop following that voice then. Obviously. — Paul Cornell
Monsters were one thing. She was used to monsters, she could deal with monsters. A noise in the darkness, with nothing attached to it, was another. — Paul Cornell
The neighbors ... hadn't, thankfully, done the usual by saying that Losley was a pleasant neighbor who'd kept herself to herself. (Always delivered in a tone of voice that suggested that, since keeping oneself to oneself was the single greatest thing one English person could do for another, the suspect ought to be excused whatever psychopathic shit they'd visited on other people.) — Paul Cornell
When Captain America died, Americans heard it in an American way: through the media. When Captain Britain died, the British felt it in their chests. — Paul Cornell
Wisdom: Oh, fantastic. We've got an army made up of fairies and Beatles, and we're fighting H. G. Wells' martians and bloody Jack the Rippers. Who's next? Dick Van Dyke? Mr Bean? John Cleese and his dead parrot? — Paul Cornell
Black Knight: "I'm impressed. You even mended the t-shirt."
Faiza: "Mate, you're with the NHS now. — Paul Cornell
Graveyards were usually, in his team's experience, a bad idea. This one was full of greenish lights that danced between the graves, and there were a couple of swaying figures, one an emaciated husk with glowing eyes who had taken to ... yes, there he was again this morning, like every morning.
Quill tiredly raised his hand to return the wave. — Paul Cornell
So," he said to Sefton, "you knew that ghosts were real ... and you led us to the 'most haunted building in London.' What's up with that? — Paul Cornell
Out this way there was the lonely last pub, the Castle, which now had an angry chalkboard sign up that said "drinkers welcome" to indicate its dissatisfaction with other establishments' fads like pub quizzes, bands, food, and, presumably, conversation. — Paul Cornell
The brilliant escape, the funny line to cap it, despite the lack of timing. And the girl was still dead. The last act had not materialised. The world, and himself, remained so far from what they should be: so imperfect. — Paul Cornell
Judith hated nostalgia. It was just the waiting room for death. — Paul Cornell
To get to Earth from the edge of the solar system, depending on the time of year and the position of the planets, you need to pass through at least Poland, Prussia, and Turkey, and you'd probably get stamps in your passport from a few of the other great powers. Then as you get closer to the world, you arrive at a point, in the continually shifting carriage space over the countries, where this complexity has to give way or fail. And so you arrive in the blissful lubrication of neutral orbital territory. — Paul Cornell
Big construction companies, making millions on underground developments such as this, had initially gone to the bother of bringing in cranes to lift mechanical diggers, once their work was done, out of their excavations. Then they'd realized that the cost-benefit analysis actually tipped in the direction of just finding somewhere to hide the digger and leaving it entombed in a wall, the company sometimes going just a little bit beyond the planning permission they'd been given for the few days it took to do so. Ballard had slipped someone at City Hall some cash to get a look at the plans and realized that, yes, the only place the digger could have been entombed was right up against the bank. Its — Paul Cornell
You with the tentacles, you're nicked! — Paul Cornell
It's not for me to share the meanings of others. I am only in charge of my own. — Paul Cornell