Quotes & Sayings About Centre

People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid. — Kierkegaard Research Centre

We may regard the cell quite apart from its familiar morphological aspects, and contemplate its constitution from the purely chemical standpoint. We are obliged to adopt the view, that the protoplasm is equipped with certain atomic groups, whose function especially consists in fixing to themselves food-stuffs, of importance to the cell-life. Adopting the nomenclature of organic chemistry, these groups may be designated side-chains. We may assume that the protoplasm consists of a special executive centre (Leistungs-centrum) in connection with which are nutritive side-chains... The relationship of the corresponding groups, i.e., those of the food-stuff, and those of the cell, must be specific. They must be adapted to one another, as, e.g., male and female screw (Pasteur), or as lock and key (E. Fischer). — Paul R. Ehrlich

If Bengali cuisine were Wimbledon, the hilsa would always play on Centre Court. — Samanth Subramanian

Action for Happiness encourages each of us to live more compassionately and put the happiness of others at the centre of our lives. This is the path to lasting peace and happiness — Dalai Lama

The Hindu believes that every soul is a circle whose circumference is nowhere, but whose centre is located in the body, and that death means the change of this centre from body to body. — Swami Vivekananda

I many times thought peace had come,
When peace was far away;
As wrecked men deem they sight the land
At centre of the sea,
And struggle slacker, but to prove,
As hopelessly as I,
How many the fictitious shores
Before the harbor lie. — Emily Dickinson

The global centre of power shifted to Europe only between 1750 and 1850, when Europeans humiliated the Asian powers in a series of wars and conquered large parts of Asia. By 1900 Europeans firmly controlled the world's economy and most of its territory. In 1950 western Europe and the United States together accounted for more than half of global production, whereas China's portion had been reduced to 5 per cent.4 — Yuval Noah Harari

Just reaching the centre of our own galaxy would take far longer than we have existed as beings. — Bill Bryson

Adaptedness) of the conscious mind by adding to it contents of the unconscious, our aim is to create a wider personality whose centre of gravity does not necessarily coincide with the ego, but which, on the contrary, as the patient's insights increase, may even thwart his [sheer] ego-tendencies. Like a magnet, the new centre [i.e., self] attracts to itself that which is proper to it.80 — C. G. Jung

You can tell black artists are front and centre when Usher discovers and launches Justin Bieber. — Dan Hill

Old politicians, like old actors, revive in the limelight. The vacancy which afflicts them in private momentarily lifts when, oncemore, they feel the eyes of an audience upon them. Their old passion for holding the centre of the stage guides their uncertain footsteps to where the footlights shine, and summons up a wintry smile when the curtain rises. — Malcolm Muggeridge

You need peace to ground you and courage to act from the centre of yourself. — Jay Woodman

The game created a parallel world, Sidney thought. It was drama; it was excitement; it was a metaphor for the vicissitudes of life. It was also quintessentially English: democratic (there were teams with all levels of ability), communal (the cricket 'square' was often at the centre of the village green), and convivial (the game was full of eccentric characters.) It was the representation of a nation's cuisine, with its milky tea, cucumber sandwiches, Victoria sponge and lashings of beer. It was also beautiful to watch, with fifteen men, dressed in white and moving on green, creating geometrical patterns that looked as if they had been choreographed by a divine choreographer. As — James Runcie

As the astronomer rejoices in new knowledge which compels him to give up the dignity of our globe as the centre, the pride, and even the final cause of the universe, so do those who have escaped from the Christian mythology enjoy their release from the superstition which fails to make them happy, fails to make them good, fails to make them wise, and has become as great an obstacle in the way of progress as the prior mythologies which it took the place of two thousand years ago. — Harriet Martineau

As true as steel, as plantage to the moon,
As sun to day, at turtle to her mate,
As iron to adamant, as earth to centre. — William Shakespeare

I tried to think what I had loved knives for, but my mind slipped from the noose of the thought and swung, like a bird, in the centre of empty air. — Sylvia Plath

The entire hierarchy of angels
can best be described as an endlessly vast sphere of beings,
who surround an unknowable centre-point, which is called God. — Malcolm Godwin

To break out of the chaos of my darkness Into a lucid day is all my will. My words like eyes in night, stare to reach A centre for their light: and my acts thrown To distant places by impatient violence Yet lock together to mould a path of stone Out of my darkness into a lucid day. — Stephen Spender

The bed we loved in was a spinning world
of forests, castles, torchlight, clifftops, seas
where we would dive for pearls. My lover's words
were shooting stars which fell to earth as kisses
on these lips; my body now a softer rhyme
to his, now echo, assonance; his touch
a verb dancing in the centre of a noun.
Some nights, I dreamed he'd written me, the bed
a page beneath his writer's hands. Romance
and drama played by touch, by scent, by taste.
In the other bed, the best, our guests dozed on,
dribbling their prose. My living laughing love -
I hold him in the casket of my widow's head
as he held me upon that next best bed.

- Anne Hathaway — Carol Ann Duffy

All that man sees has to do with man. Worlds cannot be without an intermundane relationship. The community of the centre of all creation suggests an interradiating connection and dependence
of the parts. Else a grander idea is conceivable than that which is already embodied. — George MacDonald

We almost always live outside ourselves, and life itself is a continual dispersion. But it's towards ourselves that we tend, as towards a centre around which, like planets, we trace absurd and distant ellipses. — Fernando Pessoa

But the people I found, the people I was attracted to were not unlike myself. They were trying to find order in their world, looking for the centre.. — V.S. Naipaul

For Paul, the centre of the Christian faith was that we can never earn or deserve the favour of God, nor do we need to. The whole matter is one of grace, and all that we can do is to accept in wondering love and gratitude and trust what God has done for us. — William Barclay

Up from Earth's Centre through the Seventh Gate rose, and on the Throne of Saturn sate; And many a Knot unravel'd by the Road; But not the Master-knot of Human Fate. — Omar Khayyam

I guess when Rick is finished with his Journey to the Centre of the Earth, then we might have a go at something. We'd like to, we're open to it, and we've been talking about it. — Keith Emerson

It soon became apparent that the light of the lamp, though bestowing the doubtful privilege of a clearer view of Mr. Repetto's face, held certain disadvantages. Scarcely had the staff of Cosy Moments reached the faint yellow pool of light, in the centre of which Mr. Repetto reclined, than, with a suddenness which caused them to leap into the air, there sounded from the darkness down the road the crack-crack-crack of a revolver. Instantly from the opposite direction came other shots. Three bullets flicked grooves in the roadway almost at Billy's feet. The Kid gave a sudden howl. Psmith's hat, suddenly imbued with life, sprang into the air and vanished, whirling into the night. — P.G. Wodehouse

Without any wind blowing, the sheer weight of a raindrop, shining in parasitic luxury on a cordate leaf, caused its tip to dip, and what looked like a globule of quicksilver performed a sudden glissando down the centre vein, and then, having shed its bright load, the relieved leaf unbent. Tip, leaf, dip, relief - the instant it all took to happen seemed to me not so much a fraction of time as a fissure in it, a missed heartbeat, which was refunded at once by a patter of rhymes: I say 'patter' intentionally, for when a gust of wind did come, the trees would briskly start to drip all together in as crude an imitation of the recent downpour as the stanza I was already muttering resembled the shock of wonder I had experienced when for a moment heart and leaf had been one. — Vladimir Nabokov

I had a cup of tea, thought about my day and mostly about the horse whom, though I'd only known him a short time, I called my friend. I have few friends and am glad to have a horse for a friend. After the meal I smoked a cigarette and mused on the luxury it would be to go out, instead of talking to myself and boring myself to death with the same endless stories I'm forever telling myself. I am a very boring person, despite my enormous intelligence and distinguished appearance, and nobody knows this better than I. I've often told myself that if only I were given the opportunity, I'd perhaps become the centre of intellectual society. But by dint of talking to myself so much, I tend to repeat the same things all the time. But what can you expect? I'm a recluse. — Leonora Carrington

Ah, in this world, where every guiding thread Ends suddenly in the one sure centre, death, The visionary hand of Might-have-been Alone can fill Desire's cup to the brim! — James Russell Lowell

To keep up with the demands of the growing manufacturing sector, our Government is pleased to invest in the establishment of the Saskatchewan Manufacturing Centre of Excellence. Training skilled workers and increasing productivity and innovation are essential to the continued growth and prosperity of Saskatchewan, and Western Canada. — Michelle Rempel

the centre is the light of the sun. If you choose to take on the role of the sun as the centre of the whole, you must then be responsible for generating your own light. Any light you give to others is at your expense and it is then your duty to recharge your own light. This is a very difficult task, and certainly not the one you were intended to take on when you came to Earth. — Sidonie Bouchet

Former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister, had given indications that the Centre had offered him — Anonymous

There will be a machina mundi whose centre, so to speak, is everywhere, whose circumference is nowhere, for God is its circumference and centre and He is everywhere and nowhere. — Nicholas Of Cusa

As a journalist, my job is to be dispassionate. Suddenly to be the centre of a story and to be crying, it made me feel very insecure. — Natasha Kaplinsky

Ideas and opinions are not spontaneously "born" in each individual brain: they have had a centre of formation, or irradiation, of dissemination, of persuasion-a group of men, or a single individual even, which has developed them and presented them in the political form of current reality. — Antonio Gramsci

Smog hung all round the horizon, the sun on the bright beige countryside was painful; she and the Chevy seemed parked at the centre of an odd, religious instant. As if, on some other frequency, or out of the eye of some whirlwind rotating too slow for her heated skin even to feel the centrifugal coolness of, words were being spoken. — Thomas Pynchon

Wimbledon attracted Bill Clinton to the gallery at Centre Court Tuesday at the All England Club. NBC cameras showed his head turning back and forth with each volley. Even at a tennis match, it looks like he's denying everything. — Argus Hamilton

Whether an island such as Easter Island can be considered remote is simply a matter of perspective. Those who live there, the Rapa Nui, call their homeland Te Pito Te Henua, 'the navel of the world'. Any point on the infinite globe of the Earth can become a centre. — Judith Schalansky

Loneliness ... has very little to do with location. It's a state of mind. In the centre of every city are some of the loneliest people in the world ... because our whole planet was just outside the window, I felt even more ... connected to the seven billion other people ... — Chris Hadfield

The centre of the universe and only rotates on its axis without going from east to west, is a very dangerous attitude and one calculated not only to arouse all Scholastic philosophers and theologians but also to injure our holy faith by contradicting the Scriptures. — Robert Bellarmine

Up on the stage people appeared to be dying left right and centre, and for most of the performance I had quite felt like leaping up there and joining them. — Ali McNamara

Parents don't care about anything but their children. They are the centre of the universe; they are all that really counts. — Paula Hawkins

We must stop seeing our churches as a centre for instant solutions and micro-wave results. — Sunday Adelaja

Immediately after his re-election [Cameron] announced: "For too long we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens so long as you obey the law we will leave you alone." A statement so far to the right that it conceded the political centre ground to Judge Dredd. — Frankie Boyle

By the sole fact of his entering into 'Thought,' man represents something entirely singular and absolutely unique in the field of our experience. On a single planet, there could not be more than one centre of emergence for reflexion. — Pierre Teilhard De Chardin

When the centre of gravity of life is placed, not in life itself, but in "the beyond" - in nothingness - then one has taken away its centre of gravity altogether. — Friedrich Nietzsche

You were the centre of my universe,' I say. 'Everything else spun around you. — Rainbow Rowell

It takes a long time before we really get to grips with this [Darwin's 'On the Origin of Species'] and begin to understand it, because not only does it seem incredible and thoroughly demeaning to us, but it's yet another shock to our system to discover that not only are we not the centre of the Universe and we're not made by anything, but we started out as some kind of slime and got to where we are via being a monkey. It just doesn't read well. — Douglas Adams

Anne Hathaway
The bed we loved in was a spinning world
of forests, castles, torchlight, clifftops, seas
where we would dive for pearls. My lover's words
were shooting stars which fell to earth as kisses
on these lips; my body now a softer rhyme
to his, now echo, assonance; his touch
a verb dancing in the centre of a noun.
Some nights, I dreamed he'd written me, the bed
a page beneath his writer's hands. Romance
and drama played by touch, by scent, by taste.
In the other bed, the best, our guests dozed on,
dribbling their prose. My living laughing love -
I hold him in the casket of my widow's head
as he held me upon that next best bed. — Carol Ann Duffy

I still don't get it" Coach Hedge muttered as they roamed the centre aisle. "They named a whole town after Leo's table?"
"I think the town was here first, Coach" Nico said. — Rick Riordan

But the place which you have selected for your camp, though never so rough and grim, begins at once to have its attractions, and becomes a very centre of civilization to you: "Home is home, be it never so homely." — Henry David Thoreau

God is immanent in every atom, all-pervading, all-sustaining,all-evolving; He is its source and its end, its cause and its object, its centre and circumference; it is built on Him as its sure foundation, it breathes in Him as its encircling space; He is in everything and everything in Him. — Annie Besant

We have learnt that the exploration of the external world by the methods of physical science leads not to a concrete reality but to a shadow world of symbols, beneath which those methods are unadapted for penetrating. Feeling that there must be more behind, we return to our starting point in human consciousness - the one centre where more might become known. There we find other stirrings, other revelations than those conditioned by the world of symbols ... Physics most strongly insists that its methods do not penetrate behind the symbolism. Surely then that mental and spiritual nature of ourselves, known in our minds by an intimate contact transcending the methods of physics, supplies just that ... which science is admittedly unable to give. — Arthur Stanley Eddington

Gone to the nearest public-house. That is the centre of country gossip. They would have told you every name, from the master to the scullery-maid. — Arthur Conan Doyle

I suddenly saw that all the time it was not I who had been seeking God, but God who had been seeking me. I had made myself the centre of my own existence and had my back turned to God. — Bede Griffiths

She speculates for the first time on what Melanie could have been, could have become, if she'd lived before the Breakdown. If she'd never been bitten and infected. Because this is a child here, whatever else she is, and she's never lost that sense of her own centre before except when she smelled blood and turned, briefly into an animal. And look at how pragmatically, how ruthlessly, she's coped with that. But Justineau only pursues this train of thought for a moment. When Melanie starts to speak, she commands their full attention. "I — M.R. Carey

Even the human heart is slightly left of centre. — Northrop Frye

When in August 1793 a British delegation showed their hosts a terrestrial globe, it turned into a diplomatic incident, for the Chinese were furious to see that their empire covered so little of it. For centuries the Chinese had thought of themselves as 'The Middle Kingdom', that is the centre of the civilized world. To see otherwise was a shock. — Margaret Thatcher

I quickly realized that more than any other vegetable, the potato evokes strong reactions in people. As the head of communications for the International Potato Centre in Peru put it, 'No one gets worked up over lettuce like they do the potato.' — Elizabeth A. Johnson

In the centre of the room, clamped to an upright easel, stood the full-length portrait of a young man of extraordinary personal beauty, and in front of it, some little distance away, was sitting the artist himself, Basil Hallward, whose sudden disappearance some years — Oscar Wilde

Do you wake up in the morning and first thing, centre yourself by looking at your palms together? Thereby have a nice day. — Swami Veda Bharati

To be a poet is to place pleasure, beauty and sensual delights front and centre, it means having a predilection for debauchery. — Nicole Brossard

True progress lies in the direction of decentralization, both territorial and functional, in the development of the spirit of local and personal initiative, and of free federation from the simple to the compound, in lieu of the present hierarchy from the centre to the periphery. — Peter Kropotkin

What makes a civilization real to its inhabitants, in the end, is not just the splendid edifices at it centre, nor even the smooth functioning of the institutions they house. At its core, a civilization is the texts that are taught in its schools, learned by its students and recollected in times of tribulation. — Niall Ferguson

I was wary of my sister's cooking, which invariably consisted of a tubular pasta and economy cheese, charred black on the surface, with either tinned tuna or lardy mince lurking beneath the molten crust ... So that evening, in a tiny flat in Tooting, I was pushed into the tiny kitchen where sixteen people sat crammed around a tiny trestle table designed for pasting wallpaper, one of my sister's notorious pasta bakes smouldering in its centre like a meteorite, smelling of toasted cat food. — David Nicholls

O how gently and how lovingly dost thou lie awake in the depth and centre of my soul, where thou in secret and in silence alone, as its sole Lord, abidest, not only as in Thine own house or in Thine own chamber, but also as within my own bosom, in close and intimate union. — San Juan De La Cruz

I think it will help people have a better work-life balance, that's really important - that's the centre ground for me, it's the issues people care about in their lives. — David Cameron

May you always experience the joy that comes from putting Christ at the centre of your lives. — Pope Benedict XVI

Humanism ... is not a single hypothesis or theorem, and it dwells on no new facts. It is rather a slow shifting in the philosophic perspective, making things appear as from a new centre of interest or point of sight. — William James

What big eyes you have. Eyes of an incomparable luminosity, the numinous phosphorescence of the eyes of lycanthropes. The gelid green of your eyes fixes my reflective face; It is a preservative, like a green liquid amber; it catches me. I am afraid I will be trapped in it for ever like the poor little ants and flies that stuck their feet in resin before the sea covered the Baltic. He winds me into the circle of his eye on a reel of birdsong. There is a black hole in the middle of both your eyes; it is their still centre, looking there makes me giddy, as if I might fall into it. — Angela Carter

A red rose peeping through a white? Or else a cherry (double graced) Within a lily? Centre placed? Or ever marked the pretty beam, A strawberry shows, half drowned in cream? Or seen rich rubies blushing through A pure smooth pearl, and orient too? So like to this, nay all the rest, Is each neat niplet of her breast. — Ovid

However, Galileo got into trouble when he turned his telescope toward a wider horizon. The discovery of the four moons orbiting Jupiter - Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto - suggested that the Earth was not the centre of the universe about which all celestial bodies orbited. By challenging the geocentric model of the Solar System, Galileo found himself accused of heresy and was placed under house arrest for the rest of his life. — Andrew Thomas

If both the physiological and the safety needs are fairly well gratified, then there will emerge love and affection and belongingness needs, and the whole cycle already described will repeat itself with this new centre. Now the person will feel keenl — Abraham Maslow

True humility is a kind of self-annihilation; and this is the centre of all virtues. — John Wesley

He is the wise man who has by perfect living gained the instinct of rightness by which he guides himself, whether in thought or action, who has found that centre of balance which is always over his point of contact with circumstances. He is the man whom Nature pours the riches of all her instincts. — Nilakanta Sri Ram

Man can become like God and acquire control over the whole universe if he multiplies infinitely his centre of self-consciousness. — Swami Vivekananda

And Vicky also told her sister that all girls at the Health Centre considered that men were born crazy, if not down-right stupid.They were prepared to do crazy things & pay high prices just to prove how "macho" they were, when it came to young pretty girls. And the sisters tittered with laughter at the thought of the old men who enjoyed drinking Phyllis' urine & the young men who ate cucumber sandwiches filled with her excrement. And thus Vicky told Phyllis that although one should not take candy off children, it was quite in order to take money off crazy & stupid rich men.[MMT] — Nicholas Chong

Who looks in the sun will see no light else; but also he will see no shadow. Our life revolves unceasingly, but the centre is ever the same, and the wise will regard only the seasons of the soul. — Henry David Thoreau

A cook she certainly was, in the very bone and centre of her soul. Not a ... turkey ... in the barn-yard but looked grave when they saw her approaching, and seemed evidently to be reflecting on their latter end; and certain it was that she was always meditating on trussing, stuffing and roasting, to a degree that was calculated to inspire terror in any reflecting fowl living. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

A man can love too.'
'No; -- hardly. He can admire, and he can like, and he can fondle and be fond. He can admire and approve, and perhaps worship. He can know of a woman that she is part of himself, the most sacred part, and therefore will protect her from the very winds. But all that will not make love. It does not come to a man that to be separated from a woman is to be dislocated from his very self. A man has but one centre, and that is himself. A woman has two. Though the second may never been seen by her, may live in the arms of another, may do all for that other that man can do for woman, -- still, still, though he be half the globe asunder from her, still he is to her the half of her existence. If she really love, there is, I fancy no end of it. — Anthony Trollope

Until we discover this Spiritual Centre in ourselves, the God in us, we will be confused, miserable, unsatisfied and disturbed, an enigma to ourselves and to others. — Swami Chinmayananda

Black money is so much a part of our white economy, a tumour in the centre of the brain - try to remove it and you kill the patient. — Rohinton Mistry

People who talk of the spread of music in England and the increasing love of it, rarely seem to know where the growth of the art is really strong and properly fostered: some day the press will awake to the fact, already known abroad and to some few of us in England, that the living centre of music in Great Britain is not London, but somewhere further North. — Edward Elgar

The hatchet must fall on the block; the oak must be cleft to the centre. The weight of the world is on my shoulders. Here is the pen and the paper; on the letters in the wire basket I sign my name, I, I, and again I. — Virginia Woolf

Meditation is the technique of inner conquest - and that is the real challenge. Those who have any guts should accept the inner challenge. It is easy to reach the moon, it is easy to reach Everest; it is far more difficult to reach your own centre. But the moment you reach it all ecstasy is yours, and forever and forever. You attain to a bliss which cannot be taken away from you. — Rajneesh

Vicky had once told her that she should not be ashamed of her pubic hair. Pubic hair was what men expected to see on women. Vicky said that there was a young prostitute at the Centre who had no pubic hair & many customers were known to shy off her because they thought that she was diseased. So Phyllis was resigned to displaying her pubic hair to all who wanted to see it.[MMT] — Nicholas Chong

Each atom is trying to fly off from its centre. In the internal world, each thought is trying to go beyond control. Again each particle in the external world is checked by another force, the centripetal, and drawn towards the centre. Similarly in the thought - world the controlling power is checking all these outgoing desires. — Swami Vivekananda

Find where the sound ends and silence begins. Then exist in that moment, for there will you find your secret centre of being, the perfect place of peace within yourself. — Raymond E. Feist

Street circuits mean that we are racing in the centre of roads that people use everyday, which is very cool for drivers, but it also makes it very easy to make a mistake, which adds more excitement for fans. — Sam Bird

Of thousands of others, nearer the centre of the explosion, there was no trace. They vanished. The theory in Hiroshima is that the atomic heat was so great that they burned instantly to ashes - except that there were no ashes. — Wilfred Burchett

Love is not selective, desire is selective. In love there are no strangers. When the centre of selfishness is no longer, all desires for pleasure and fear of pain cease; one is no longer interested in being happy; beyond happiness there is pure intensity, inexhaustible energy, the ecstasy of giving from a perennial source. — Nisargadatta Maharaj

My mother - who's from Iowa - owns and runs her own day-care centre, while my father's a developer. And my musical influences, I think, came from my father's side of the family. — Keri Hilson

God abhors a naked singularity because that's when things stop making sense. Predictability breaks down. That's why the universe takes all its dirty little secrets and hides them in the centre of a black hole. — Gavin G. Smith

Yet the timeless in you is aware of life's timelessness, And knows that yesterday is but today's memory and tomorrow is today's dream. And that that which sings and contemplates in you is still dwelling within the bounds of that first moment which scattered the stars into space. Who among you does not feel that his power to love is boundless? And yet who does not feel that very love, though boundless, encompassed within the centre of his being, and moving not from love thought to love thought, nor from love deeds to other love deeds? And is not time even as love is, undivided and paceless? — Khalil Gibran

Hello. It is Monday. I live in Sun City. Sun City is a city that is entirely contained inside an enormous concrete building in the shape of a sun. Its rays house our living quarters; its circular centre is where we work and shop. No one has ever been outside of the city; it is generally suspected that the environment outside of the city is uninhabitable. — Mike Russell

The strategic aspect of General Joffre's policy was not less stultified than the administrative. The easterly and north-easterly attacks into which his four Armies of the Right and Centre were impetuously launched, were immediately stopped and hurled back with a slaughter so frightful that it has never yet been comprehended by the world. His — Winston S. Churchill

If you are playing King Lear you are the centre of attention anyway. You don't need to draw attention to yourself. It's all laid out for you. — Ian McKellen

The question is not how can I overcome fear? The question is: how can I use it creatively? If you have problems (and we all do), how are you going to deal with them? To be is to be imperfect. Contentment is resiliency, the willingness and the ability to see the opportunities presented by mistakes. Take what you like and pay for it - failure is the price you pay for success. It is the wages of growth. Success is failing forwards, figuring out how to conduct suffering, and in its reconstruction to transform it into illumination. Eschew impatience. Let stillness teach you where your centre is, where your origins are. Be impeccable in all your dealings with the world. Integrity isn't a luxury - it's an essential. Remember the best advice of the I Ching: perseverance furthers. — Billy Marshall Stoneking

I grew up in the suburbs, so I remember arriving at Waterloo and seeing Big Ben and the coloured lights on top of the Southbank Centre and thinking, 'Wow!' — Martin Freeman

In the centre of Bond was a hurricane-room, the kind of citadel found in old-fashioned houses in the tropics. These rooms are small, strongly built cells in the heart of the house, in the middle of the ground floor and sometimes dug down into its foundations. To this cell the owner and his family retire if the storm threatens to destroy the house, and they stay there until the danger is past. Bond went to his hurricane room only when the situation was beyond his control and no other possible action could be taken. Now he retired to this citadel, closed his mind to the hell of noise and violent movement, and focused on a single stitch in the back of the seat in front of him, waiting with slackened nerves for whatever fate had decided for B. E. A. Flight No. 130. — Ian Fleming