Bayley Best Quotes & Sayings

Kitsch of course only comes into existence when we recognize how and why it works. — John Bayley

Love. It is an incredible sensation. An amazing gift. All consuming and yet as light as a whisper. Once you've been in love you don't ever want to find yourself out of it. — Jenna Bayley-Burke

It is the fragrant lack of practicality that makes high-heeled shoes so fascinating: in terms of static mechanics they induce a sort of insecurity which some find titillating. — Stephen Bayley

You must never aspire to 'finish' a house, you can merely hope to start it, and from then on it's an evolutionary process. — Stephen Bayley

That's one of the things about getting older isn't it? You suddenly realise that you are what you set out to be. And there are no role models any more. — Stephen Bayley

When you model your relationship on someone else's, your partner can never match up to the fantasy. — Nikki Bayley

Everyone has taste, yet it is more of a taboo subject than sex or money. The reason for this is simple: claims about your attitudes to or achievements in the carnal and financial arenas can be disputed only by your lover and your financial advisers, whereas by making statements about your taste you expose body and soul to terrible scrutiny. Taste is a merciless betrayer of social and cultural attitudes. Thus, while anybody will tell you as much (and perhaps more than) you want to know about their triumphs in bed and at the bank, it is taste that gets people's nerves tingling. — Stephen Bayley

I wouldn't mind someone lobbing hand grenades at me, but having to reset the timer on the video recorder puts me into a blood-spitting frenzy. — Stephen Bayley

Vermeer's woman reading a letter is as full of latent or subliminal kitsch as Tolstoy's War and Peace. — John Bayley

Taste is more to do with manners than appearances. Taste is both myth and reality; it is not a style. — Stephen Bayley

My wife and I both love cooking - I am an advanced male - so we argue about who gets to rustle up dinner. — Stephen Bayley

In an age robbed of religious symbols, going to the shops replaces going to the church. We have a free choice, but at a price. We can win experience, but never achieve innocence. Marx knew that the epic activities of the modern world involve not lance and sword but dry goods. — Stephen Bayley

You are what you pretend to be. — Stephen Bayley

The happiest marriages are full of alternative lives, lived in the head, unknown to the partner. — John Bayley

Fashion is the most intense expression of the phenomenon of neomania, which has grown ever since the birth of capitalism. Neomania assumes that purchasing the new is the same as acquiring value ... If the purchase of a new garment coincides with the wearing out of an old one, then obviously there is no fashion. If a garment is worn beyond the moment of its natural replacement, there is pauperization. Fashion flourishes on surplus, when someone buys more than he or she needs. — Stephen Bayley

"You wash your hands, don't you?"
Bayley's eyes dropped to his hands. They were as clean as need be. "Yes," he said.
"All right. I suppose it's a measure of instability to feel such revulsion at dirty hands as to be unable to clean an oily mechanism by hand even in a emergency. Still, in the ordinary course of living, the revulsion keeps you clean, which is good. — Isaac Asimov

I have been an elated reader of all the great Russian novelists and short-story writers since my early twenties and I have often written about them, though I know no Russian and have never been to Russia. The lure for me (I realize now) lay in John Bayley's wonderful phrase - I believe in his learned introduction to Pushkin's Letters - that the "doors of the Russian house are wide open": we see people who speak out in the lost hours of the day as it passes through them. — V.S. Pritchett

The assumption must be that those who can see value only in tradition, or versions of it, deny man's ability to adapt to changing circumstances. — Stephen Bayley

Something happened during Matt's talk. When I sat down I was one person, but by the time he was done, I was someone else. Someone changed. Someone new. Someone I didn't know. My arms were covered in gooseflesh. My stomach was doing this buoyant, top-of-the-roller-coaster thing. Suddenly I wanted to be pretty. I wanted guys to think I was pretty. In particular, I wanted this guy to think I was pretty... — Susan Auten

The laws of England will protect the rights of British subjects, and give a remedy for a grievance committed by one British subject upon another, in whatever country that may be done. — Bayley

Every object and purpose of justice is effectually answered, and every supposed inconvenience is effectually rebutted by the law as it stands. — Bayley

Interior design is a travesty of the architectural process and a frightening condemnation of the credulity, helplessness and gullibility of the most formidable consumers - the rich. — Stephen Bayley

While there is a great value in things that are old, it seems that the overwhelming challenge in Britain in the late 20th century is to make every effort to see value in the contemporary and in the future. — Stephen Bayley

I just don't understand how you can not be concerned about your appearance. From time to time I'm vilified as the person who cares about the look of a teapot - and it's not that I believe my taste is superior, I just can not believe that other people don't care. — Stephen Bayley

If you were born in Britain after World War II, you see a continuous atmosphere of decline, moral and economic and political. — Stephen Bayley

One function of art is to de-kitschify kitsch. — John Bayley

As the twentieth century ends, commerce and culture are coming closer together. The distinction between life and art has been eroded by fifty years of enhanced communications, ever-improving reproduction technologies and increasing wealth. — Stephen Bayley

I have put [the word] "discoveries" in inverted commas because scientific results, perhaps as much at least as artistic achievements, are a product of contemporary taste, driven by momentary appetites rather than eternal verities. — Stephen Bayley

I know of no case in which you are to have a judicial proceeding, by which a man is to be deprived of any part of his property, without his having an opportunity of being heard. — Bayley

I have no particular interest in antiquities or antiques, but I like things to meet a certain aesthetic. — Stephen Bayley