Quotes & Sayings About Heathrow

Why do Britons keep stabbing each other in August? Why do seaside hotels burn down in August? Why do children disappear in August, examinations get easier and Heathrow become the world's worst airport? The answer lies not in reality but in appearance. News editors abhor a vacuum. Half an hour of airtime and 10 pages of news must be filled each day, whatever the weather. — Simon Jenkins

The two million or so residents who live beneath the Heathrow flight path are accustomed to the noise. However, they are right to feel that any expansion would represent an unacceptable broken promise. — Zac Goldsmith

In a world of twelve-years-olds in sexy boots and nans in sparkly mini-dresses, the surest way to tell the prostitute walking into a hotel at Heathrow is to look for the lady in the designer suit. — Belle De Jour

The Da Vinci Code may well be the only novel ever written that begins with the word 'renowned' ... I think what enabled the first word to tip me off that I was about to spend a number of hours in the company of one of the worst prose stylists in the history of literature was this. Putting curriculum vitae details into complex modifiers on proper names or definite descriptions is what you do in journalistic stories about deaths; you just don't do it in describing an event in a narrative ... Why did I keep reading? Because London Heathrow is a long way from San Francisco International. — Geoffrey K. Pullum

It is psychotic to draw a line between two places.

It is psychotic to go.

It is psychotic to look.

Psychotic to live in a different country forever.

Psychotic to lose something forever.

The compelling conviction that something has been lost is psychotic.

Even the aeroplane's dotted line on the monitor as it descends to Heathrow is purely weird ambient energy.

It is psychotic to submit to violence in a time of great violence and yet it is psychotic to leave that home or country, the place where you submitted again and again, forever.

Indeed, it makes the subsequent involuntary arrival a stressor for psychosis. — Bhanu Kapil

If we want to preserve Heathrow's hub status, we need to stop clogging it up with point-to-point flights to places such as Cyprus and Greece, which between them account for 87 weekly flights, and contribute nothing to overall connectivity. — Zac Goldsmith

Found myself in Zurich Airport. I'd done a TV show, oddly enough, with Mavis Staples. That's the way they do it in Switzerland. And I'd had a bit of a late night with members of her band. And I was - my flight was delayed. And I was sitting in the airport, and I just came up with the idea. And by the time, we landed at Heathrow, I'd pretty much sort of got it. — Nick Lowe

I'm not even sure where home is. Probably Terminal 5. There is a strange sense of calm about arriving back at Heathrow. — Alex Turner

I did not fully understand the dread term 'terminal illness' until I saw Heathrow for myself. — Dennis Potter

ahead, burning with embarrassment, confusion and most of all, the unshakeable feeling that I had done something wrong only I didn't know what. And if he hadn't apologized by the time we landed, I could always push him down the escalators at Heathrow and say it was an accident. We spent the rest of the flight in silence, listening to Maura's choked sobs every time the plane shook, followed by another wordless hour in customs and nearly two more driving home. I was half awake, half asleep, delirious from jet lag and unwelcome tears. I didn't care about the ring at all any more, all I wanted to know was why Adam was so incredibly angry. — Lindsey Kelk

I would like to fly in a professional like manners one of the big airliners. I have to made my mind which of the followwing: Boeing 747, 757, 767, 777 and or Airbus A300 (it will depend on the cost and which one is easiest to learn). The level I would like to achieve is to be able to takeoff and land, to handle communication with ATC, to be able to successfully navigate from A to B (JFK to Heathrow for example). In a sense to be able to pilot one of these Big Bird, even if I am not a real professional pilot. — Zacarias Moussaoui

In Heathrow a vast chunk of memory detached itself from a blank bowl of airport sky and fell on him. He vomited into a blue plastic canister without breaking stride. — William Gibson

In mid-September Soufan talked to an al-Qaeda prisoner named Ramzi Binalshibh, who was chained naked to the floor in a CIA black prison at the Bagram air base outside Kabul. He said he was starting to obtain "valuable actionable intelligence" before CIA officers ordered him to stop talking forty-five minutes later. On September 17, they flew their prisoner to a second black site in Morocco, then on to Poland; under extreme duress he described plots to crash airplanes into Heathrow Airport and Canary Wharf in London. He was also diagnosed as a schizophrenic. — Tim Weiner

London and the south-east of England are very crowded spaces. Wherever a new runway is placed, thousands will be affected. Residents in nearby Longford, Harmondsworth and Sipson, which lie to the north of Heathrow, face having their homes compulsorily purchased for land to build the new runway. — Tim Bowler

My dad was a baggage handler at Heathrow and careful with money. He worked hard and had three jobs when I was young. I wish I'd inherited his care for money. Sadly, I've grown up to be rather scatty when it comes to finances. — Gary Numan

I've never been outside Heathrow so it will be exciting to see what London has to offer. I think I've only flown into Heathrow maybe twice. — Misty May-Treanor

In 1992 I was doing one of my first ever tours and I was in Heathrow airport and I saw these middle-aged musicians who had clearly been on tour for decades, and they all looked haggard and unhappy and unhealthy. I vowed to myself that I would never be that person. Flash forward 20 years and I found myself in Heathrow looking haggard and unhappy and unhealthy. I decided I would rather spend my time staying home working on music and making dinner with friends, instead of spending six months in a hotel in a state of depressing suspended adolescence. — Moby

To many, Heathrow in August is a paradigm of Hell. — Paul Johnson

A sea-green sky: lamps blossoming white. This is marginal land: fields of strung wire, of treadless tyres in ditches, fridges dead on their backs, and starving ponies cropping the mud. It is a landscape running with outcasts and escapees, with Afghans, Turks and Kurds: with scapegoats, scarred with bottle and burn marks, limping from the cities with broken ribs. The life forms here are rejects, or anomalies: the cats tipped from speeding cars, and the Heathrow sheep, their fleece clotted with the stench of aviation fuel. — Hilary Mantel

In the short walk between his aeroplane and reaching the outside world at Heathrow, Michael Bywater encountered no fewer than 93 separate notices telling him off for things he hadn't done or which hadn't even occurred to him to do. Being bossed and patronised are two sensations that most sophisticated adults would sooner do without and yet we are bossed and patronised, by the media, by politicians, by business, by advertising agencies and the public services, more now than at any other time in our history. Why should this be? — Alexander Waugh

I've decided to recast myself as Utopian. I like this landscape of the M25 and Heathrow. I like airfreight offices and rent-a-car bureaus. I like dual carriageways. When I see a CCTV camera, I know I'm safe. — J.G. Ballard

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

You won't enjoy it," sighed Crowley. "It's been in the car for more than a fortnight." A heavy bass beat began to thump through the Bentley as they sped past Heathrow. Aziraphale's brow furrowed. "I don't recognize this," he said. "What is it?" "It's Tchaikovsky's 'Another One Bites the Dust'," said Crowley, closing his eyes as they went through Slough. To while away the time as they crossed the sleeping Chilterns, they also listened to William Byrd's "We Are the Champions" and Beethoven's "I Want To Break Free." Neither were as good as Vaughan Williams's "Fat-Bottomed Girls. — Terry Pratchett

Prime Minister: Whenever I get gloomy with the state of the world, I think about the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport. General opinion's starting to make out that we live in a world of hatred and greed, but I don't see that. It seems to me that love is everywhere. Often it's not particularly dignified or newsworthy, but it's always there - fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, old friends. When the planes hit the Twin Towers, as far as I know none of the phone calls from the people on board were messages of hate or revenge - they were all messages of love. If you look for it, I've got a sneaking suspision love actually is all around. — Richard Curtis

My Dad says that being a Londoner has nothing to do with where you're born. He says that there are people who get off a jumbo jet at Heathrow, go through immigration waving any kind of passport, hop on the tube and by the time the train's pulled into Piccadilly Circus they've become a Londoner. — Ben Aaronovitch

Historically, Heathrow has been something of a joke, outweighed by its excellent connections. We have to aspire to having an airport at Heathrow with two runways which is a world-class airport. It's a big challenge. — Philip Hammond

What god would be hanging around Terminal Two of Heathrow Airport trying to catch the 15:37 flight to Oslo? — Douglas Adams

Whenever I get gloomy with the state of the world, I think about the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport. General opinion's starting to make out that we live in a world of hatred and greed, but I don't see that. It seems to me that love is everywhere. Often it's not particularly dignified or newsworthy, but it's always there - fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, old friends. When the planes hit the Twin Towers, as far as I know none of the phone calls from the people on board were messages of hate or revenge - they were all messages of love. If you look for it, I've got a sneaky feeling you'll find that love actually is all around. — Richard Curtis

Tetchily. She was fetching Daphne from Heathrow later; at least — Kate Morton

Most people are flying to Heathrow because it's a hub, so they can fly on to other places, often long-distance flights. If they can't go on those long-distance flights from Heathrow, they will go to Paris, they will go to Amsterdam, they will go to Frankfurt, because those are viable alternatives. — Geoff Hoon

I love England. In fact, they're getting to know me so well at Heathrow Immigration that this time I was able to completely bypass the six months rabies quarantine. — Emo Philips

Yes, Heathrow is the U.K.'s busiest airport, but new runways or a new airport are not the answer. It is far better to focus on improving capacity. — Zac Goldsmith

The limitless jet-lag purgatory of Immigration and Baggage at Heathrow. — Monica Dickens

I'm quite good at water skiing. Dave Clark, from the 1960s band Dave Clark Five, taught me how to water ski in Spain one year. I can do jumps too. I used to go to a club in Heathrow, but I don't do it any more, as it's given me a bad back. I was brought up in Poole, Dorset, so I've always loved watersports. — Tony Blackburn