Tony Parsons Quotes & Sayings

You have to give kids from ordinary families a ladder. You have to show them there's a way out. — Tony Parsons

There are a handful of barbecue seafood shacks on the beach at Hat Nai Yang, which is a fabulous place to have dinner. It's very much run for locals and they serve the catch of the day, which might be lobster, white snapper or squid. It's ridiculously reasonable, too. — Tony Parsons

My teenage years were spent trying to look like Rod Stewart - I ended up looking like Dave Hill from Slade. — Tony Parsons

I do tend to look back to my parents generation and think wow! what a great way to be, to live with one person for a lifetime, to bring your kids up in these really solid families. — Tony Parsons

I feel like the only person in the world who sees David Beckham modelling his swimming pants on the cover of Elle magazine and thinks - oh, how much better a handsome guy like you would look, David, without all those dumb ink stains stitched into your skin. — Tony Parsons

When he was born, I looked at my little boy and felt an unconditional love I never knew was inside me. As he grew, and I watched him stagger about, squeak his first words, and turn into a beautiful little boy, that feeling did not change. — Tony Parsons

I love you but I'm not in love with you — Tony Parsons

It's funny. You love something and one day it's suddenly gone or changed or lost forever. But somehow that doesn't stop your loving. Maybe that's how you know it's the real thing. — Tony Parsons

Learn to trust your instincts. Only something dead goes with the tide. Only something living can go against it. — Tony Parsons

My parents have been dead for many years, and when your folks are gone there is nobody standing between you and eternity. — Tony Parsons

The thing I care about is my weight - I'm as fanatical about it as a member of Girls Aloud. I weigh myself every morning. I know exactly what I want to be - 82kg - and I try to stick to it. — Tony Parsons

It's painful and it's messy. But sometimes you just have to make the break and start again. — Tony Parsons

When you have a kid, money matters. — Tony Parsons

Tattoos are so widespread, so ugly and so very, very permanent. You can, in theory, have them removed - but a large chunk of your living flesh will go with it. — Tony Parsons

Love is what's left when being in love has gone, okay? It's when you care about someone and you hope they're happy, but you're not under any illusions about them. Maybe that kind of love is not exciting and passionate and all those things that fade with time. All those things that you're so keen on. But in the end it's the only kind of love that really matters. — Tony Parsons

I am all for cracking down on inappropriate digital behaviour. Too often the connected world is an excuse for some coward hiding behind a keyboard to bully someone else. — Tony Parsons

Home is oneness, home is my original nature. It is right here, simply in what is. There is nowhere else I have to go, and nothing else I have to become. — Tony Parsons

When you are a journalist in the music business, as I was, you end up dying or going to the gym - I chose the gym. — Tony Parsons

There was an intelligence about him (Joe Strummer) that allowed his band to change and evolve, just as Johnny Rotten and the Sex Pistols were disappearing up their own bondage trousers. And there was a generosity about Strummer, too, a warmth and humanity about the guy. He was a brilliant musician, a beautiful man, and a charismatic artist. There is a part of me that bitterly resents the fact that the Clash never replaced the Rolling Stones in rock music's hall of heroes. But the Clash were not about milking if for a lifetime ... I thought they were the greatest band I had ever seen. And, half a lifetime on, in a large part of my soul, I still do ... They changed lives. They certainly changed mine. Because they made me believe that, with passion and commitment and a bit of fire in your belly, you could be exactly the person you wanted to be. — Tony Parsons

The tattooed nation will live to regret this voluntary disfigurement. — Tony Parsons

But you have learn to let go, my mother said, 'That's part of it, isn't it?' 'Part of what?' Part of what it means to love someone. To really love someone. If you love someone you just don't see them as an extension of yourself. You don't just love them for what's in it for you.' 'Love means knowing when to let go,' she told me. — Tony Parsons

I box for four hours a week and my diet is pretty healthy. — Tony Parsons

And so we stayed out in the garden of the old house until we couldn't kick a ball, laughing in the gathering twilight, making the most of the good weather and all the days that were left, our little game watched only by next door's cat, and every star in the heavens. — Tony Parsons

Sometimes the fog in his eyes would clear, that fog caused by the pain and the killers of pain, and when it cleared, I saw regret and fear in those eyes swimming with tears and I was convinced that this was it, this was the end, this was surely the end. — Tony Parsons

She wasn't the kind who cared about signs, she moved through the world as if she had a right to be there - anywhere, everywhere. Like a woman in a book, like a girl in a song. — Tony Parsons

I have this theory about divorce. I have a theory that is never a tragedy for adults and always a tragedy for children. Adults can lose weight, find someone nicer, get their life back. Divorce gives grown-ups a get-out-of-jail-free card. It is the children who pay the price, and pay it for the rest of their lives. But we can't admit that, all us scarred veterans of the divorce court, because it would mean admitting that we have inflicted wounds on our children that they will carry for the rest of their lives. — Tony Parsons

I once read somewhere that, in any relationship, the one who cares the least is the one with all the power. — Tony Parsons

The most convincing argument against early parenthood is that you are in a relationship that is likely to fall apart before that child grows up. — Tony Parsons

I don't think much of anything I wrote before the age of 30. — Tony Parsons

It can't always be a honeymoon — Tony Parsons

Sometimes we are only aware of how happy we are when the moment has passed. But now and again, if we are very lucky, we are aware of happiness when it is actually happening. — Tony Parsons

Largely this is a class thing - writers tend to be cosseted little middle-class kiddies who think that the world owes them a royalty cheque. But just doing it - being in your room for years on end, locked in your head, alone with invented ghosts - it weakens and softens the body. And I know I can't just live in my head. — Tony Parsons

I'm not saying it's what I would have wanted. But don't you see? We fuck up our lives again and again and it's always our children who pick up the bill. We move on to new relationships, always starting over, always thinking we've got another chance to get it right, it's the kids from all these broken marriages who pay the price. They - my son, your daughters, all the millions like them - are carrying around wounds that are going to last a lifetime. It has to stop. — Tony Parsons

Love means knowing when to let go. — Tony Parsons

Grammar schools are public schools without the sodomy. — Tony Parsons

I hate Nassau and the Bahamas. It's one of those places I'd always wanted to visit since reading Ian Fleming but it was full of casinos with Americans in shorts. — Tony Parsons

If someone does something illegal on Twitter - like incite hatred, or make racist remarks, or threaten to rip someone's intestines out if they insult Justin Bieber - then there has to be some way of censuring them. — Tony Parsons

I can't think of a bigger waste of police time than chasing somebody who has said something offensive on Twitter. — Tony Parsons

Everything ends. It does. Sooner or later. This - all this - it has to end sometime. — Tony Parsons

I think airports are places of huge human drama. The more I see of it, the more I am convinced that Heathrow is a secret city, with its own history, folklore and mythology. But what has surprised me is the love the people who work there feel for the place. Everyone seems to think they are plugged into something majestic. — Tony Parsons

What's your name?'Leon said, when waht he meant was - may I love you for ever?
And she told him. — Tony Parsons

I've been visiting Thailand for more than 20 years but didn't fall in love with it until I visited Phuket Town in Phuket. The northern part of Phuket is one of the most fascinating places I've ever been, and largely unspoilt and unknown. — Tony Parsons

Don't you see?" he said. "This could go on for another five years, another ten years, and then where would we be? You want to grow old waiting for something that's never going to happen? Is that what you want? — Tony Parsons

A tattoo doesn't make you look like an individual. — Tony Parsons

It felt natural. That is what I remember most about becoming a father halfway through my 20s. As if Mother Nature was giving me the big thumbs up. — Tony Parsons

Dont feel too bad, Harry. People break-up everyday, its not the end of the world.. — Tony Parsons

I am a sweet old softy, but it took toughness to get through what I went through. — Tony Parsons

To love means to realize there is a time to let the beloved one go — Tony Parsons

My principal motivation is supporting my family, which is not a bad reason for getting up in the morning. That's always been my motivation - to take care of the people who rely on me. — Tony Parsons

Cancer seems a high price to pay for an innocuous-looking habit. You get into smoking and you are robbed of the last 25 years of your life. Some cocky souls will say, 'Ah yes, but they are the worst 25 years.' Nobody feels like that in a cancer ward. There are no cocky souls in a cancer ward. But there's a lot of pain, not just of the excruciating physical kind that they shoot you full of morphine to smother. There are a lot of tears. All round. It is hard to say goodbye to the people you love. And it's scary. Cancer wards have a way of knocking the cockiness out of you. And for what? Another cigarette? — Tony Parsons

People are always surprised at what a nice guy I am. — Tony Parsons

All that we do is governed by the law of opposites in which every so-called positive act is exactly and equally balanced by its opposite.; — Tony Parsons

The thing about cancer is that it can always exceed your worst expectations. There is something pornographic about cancer's ability to confound your imagination. Whatever new obscenity cancer comes up with to torment and torture you, it can always do worse tomorrow. — Tony Parsons

The thing to remember about Phuket is it's very beach-oriented and relaxed. The trendiest beach is Koh Sirey, which is full of groovy places to have a cocktail and watch the sun go down. — Tony Parsons

If you are always craving, always wanting, never satisfied, never happy with what you've got, you end up even more lost and lonely than you do ... — Tony Parsons

I have found having my dad as my North Star has worked well for me. — Tony Parsons

He was totally in thrall to the face of the girl in front of him. She stunned him. She paralysed him. Just being in the presence of that face made him pause, his tongue tied with self-consciousness. But she made it easy for him — Tony Parsons

Sometimes I think that love is a case of mistaken identity. — Tony Parsons

My parents gave up a lot to bring me up in the little house on the prairie, and I wasn't prepared to make those sacrifices, nor was the generation before me and the generation after. — Tony Parsons