Alan Partridge Basic Alan Quotes & Sayings

I am the Counselor at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. — Dennis Ross

I never answer, because I can't, which is my favorite among my own books. — Guy Gavriel Kay

Something I've realized lately, to my shock, is that I am an optimist, in that I think humans are almost infinitely capable of self-change and self-modification, and that we really can build the future that we want if we're smart about it. — Brian Eno

On one occasion during the salaat, I was restless and fidgety. Out of nowhere, I felt a swift spank on my behind. I turned around to see who it was, but there was no one behind me. I surmised it was my uncle, who was standing next to me, so after finishing the salaat, I tearfully accused him of the spanking. Without flinching, he pointed up to the sky and said, "No, it was Allah." My eyes went wide, and I thought, "If only I had turned around faster, I would have seen the hand of Allah!" Twenty years later, he confessed it was him, but in the meantime, I was honored to have been spanked by God Himself. — Nabeel Qureshi

I have often perplexed myself over what I saw in Nelle Snyder's aged face at that moment. It was no look of paranoia. It was a look of waiting. Perpetual waiting. That look was to come back to me sixteen years later when I heard Rose's narration at the end of James Cameron's Titanic, with its line about survivors "waiting for an absolution that never came." Yet the waiting I saw in Nelle Snyder's face seemed larger even than a waiting for absolution. It seemed vaster even than Titanic herself. Call it the waiting of the Mother of all Perished Vessels. Or of a Ship of Honeymoon Dreams perchance, with a passenger list spanning all humanity, that once proudly sailed but was lost, aeons ago, and sank to a dark, unreachable abode where nothing whatsoever can be grasped about her except her perplexing power still to haunt us. — James Glaeg

If this world affords true happiness, it is to be found in a home where love and confidence increase with the years, where the necessities of life come without severe strain, where luxuries enter only after their cost has been carefully considered. — A. Edward Newton

No, by God, you've accused me of coldness, but how
can you, when you can feel how hot my body is against
yours? You've said I have none of the red-blooded passion
of my sex, but you don't know. You," he gasped, pressing
against her with a hard thrust of his hips, "you will know it
the depth of my passion. But you will. — Charlotte Featherstone

On the ethics of war the Quran and the New Testament are worlds apart. Whereas Jesus tells us to turn the other cheek, the Quran tells us, 'Whoso commits aggression against you, do you commit aggression against him' (2:194). The New Testament says nothing about how to wage war. The Quran, by contrast, is filled with just-war precepts. Here war is allowed in self-defense (2:190; 22:39), but hell is the punishment for killing other Muslims (4:93), and the execution of prisoners of war is explicitly condemned (47:4). Whether in the abstract is is better to rely on a scripture that regulates war or a scripture that hopes war away is an open question, but no Muslim-majority country has yet dropped an atomic bomb in war. — Stephen R. Prothero

I smile and start to count on my fingers: One, people are good. Two, every conflict can be removed. Three, every situation, no matter how complex it initially looks, is exceedingly simple. Four, every situation can be substantially improved; even the sky is not the limit. Five, every person can reach a full life. Six, there is always a win-win solution. Shall I continue to count? — Eliyahu M. Goldratt