George Higgins Quotes & Sayings

HIGGINS [aggrieved] Do you mean that my language is improper?
MRS HIGGINS. No, dearest: it would be quite proper - say on a canal barge ... — George Bernard Shaw

This life's hard, but it's harder if you're stupid. — George V. Higgins

The received image of a writer is that of an unproductive sensitive who suffers from the vapors, is enslaved by his gonads, falls victim to romantic swoons and passes out at deadlines. — George V. Higgins

You cannot write well without data. — George V. Higgins

Professor Henry Higgins: She's an owl, sickened by a few days of *my* sunshine. — George Bernard Shaw

HIGGINS. Have you no morals, man?
DOOLITTLE [unabashed] Cant afford them, Governor. Neither could you if you was as poor as me. — George Bernard Shaw

How can she? She's incapable of understanding anything. Besides, do any of us understand what we are doing? If we did, would we ever do it? — George Bernard Shaw

Show the reader what the character thinks about, and then the reader will think about it too. — George V. Higgins

Life is hard but being stupid makes it harder. — George V. Higgins

Professor Henry Higgins: Oh, Pickering, for God's sake stop being dashed and do something! — George Bernard Shaw

The Red Sox are a religion. Every year we re-enact the agony and the temptation in the Garden. Baseball child's play? Hell, up here in Boston it's a passion play. — George V. Higgins

There's only one way of escaping trouble; and that's killing things. Henry Higgins, Act V, Pygmalion — George Bernard Shaw

The seductiveness of baseball is that almost everyone with an abiding interest in it knows exactly how it should be played. And secretly believes that he could do it, if only God had seen fit to make him just a little bit less clumsy. — George V. Higgins

Never tell your reader what your story is about. Reading is a participatory sport. People do it because they are intelligent and enjoy figuring things out for themselves.
(advicetowriters) — George V. Higgins

PICKERING:Excuse the straight question, Higgins. Are you a man of good character where women are concerned?
HIGGINS [moodily]:Have you ever met a man of good character where women are concerned? — George Bernard Shaw

Data is what distinguishes the dilettante from the artist. — George V. Higgins

Egotism: The art of seeing in yourself what others cannot see. — George V. Higgins

A cop told me, a long time ago, that there's no substitute for knowing what you're doing. Most of us scribblers do not. The ones that're any good are aware of this. The rest write silly stuff. The trouble is this: The readers know it. — George V. Higgins

The characters are telling you the story. I'm not telling you the story, they're going to do it. If I do it right, you will get the whole story. — George V. Higgins

MRS PEARCE. Mr Higgins: youre tempting the girl. It's not right. She should think of the future.
HIGGINS. At her age! Nonsense! Time enough to think of the future when you havnt any future to think of. — George Bernard Shaw

Higgins: I find that the moment I let a woman make friends with me, she becomes jealous, exacting, suspicious, and a damned nuisance. I find that the moment I let myself make friends with a woman, I become selfish and tyrannical. Women upset everything. When you let them into your life, you find that the woman is driving at one thing and youre driving at another.
Pickering: At what, for example?
Higgins: Oh, Lord knows! I suppose the woman wants to live her own life; and the man wants to live his; and each tries to drag the other on to the wrong track. One wants to go north and the other south; and the result is that both have to go east, though they both hate the east wind. — George Bernard Shaw

Martin had a period of relishing the Boston thug-writer George V. Higgins, author of The Friends of Eddie Coyle. Higgins's characters had an infectious way of saying 'inna' and 'onna,' so Martin would say, for example, 'I think this lunch should be onna Hitch' or 'I heard he wasn't that useful inna sack.' Simple pleasures you may say, but linguistic sinew is acquired in this fashion and he would not dump a trope until he had chewed all the flesh and pulp of it and was left only with pith and pips. Thus there arrived a day when Park Lane played host to a fancy new American hotel with the no less fancy name of 'The Inn on The Park' and he suggested a high-priced cocktail there for no better reason than that he could instruct the cab driver to 'park inna Inn onna Park.' This near-palindrome (as I now think of it) gave us much innocent pleasure. — Christopher Hitchens

Apart front the things you can pick up ( the dressing and the proper way of speaking and so on), the difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves, but how she's treated. I shall always be a flower girl to Professor Higgins, because he always treats me as a flower girl, and always will; but I know I can be a lady to you, because you always treat me like a lady and always will. — George Bernard Shaw

I shall always be a flower girl to Professor Higgins, because he always treats me as a flower girl, and always will; but I know I can be a lady to you, because you always treat me as a lady, and always will. — George Bernard Shaw

HIGGINS [sitting down beside her] Rubbish! you shall marry an ambassador. You shall marry the Governor-General of India or the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, or somebody who wants a deputy-queen. I'm not going to have my masterpiece thrown away on Freddy.

LIZA. You think I like you to say that. But I haven't forgot what you said a minute ago; and I won't be coaxed round as if I was a baby or a puppy. If I can't have kindness, I'll have independence.

HIGGINS. Independence? That's middle class blasphemy. We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.

LIZA [rising determinedly] I'll let you see whether I'm dependent on you. If you can preach, I can teach. I'll go and be a teacher.

HIGGINS. What'll you teach, in heaven's name?

LIZA. What you taught me. I'll teach phonetics.

HIGGINS. Ha! Ha! Ha! — George Bernard Shaw

If you do not seek to publish what you have written, then you are not a writer and you never will be. — George V. Higgins

It was darker than a carload of assholes. — George V. Higgins

Politics is a choice of enemas. You're gonna get it up the ass, no matter what you do. — George V. Higgins

Writing is the only trade I know of in which sniveling confessions of extreme incompetence are taken as credentials probative of powers to astound the multitude. — George V. Higgins

What You Lose on the Swings You Make Up on the Merry-Go-Round, — George V. Higgins

Rental formal wear of the sky-blue, brocade and shiny varieties is favored by upwardly mobile young gangsters drafted as groomsmen for weddings. — George V. Higgins