Mark Forsyth Quotes

Love is nothing because those who do something for the love of it do it for nothing. — Mark Forsyth

So Shakespeare stole; but he did wonderful things with his plunder. He's like somebody who nicks your old socks and then darns them. — Mark Forsyth

After all, fiction is only fact minus time. — Mark Forsyth

The glorious insanities of the English language mean that you can do all sorts of odd and demeaning things to a book. You can cook it. — Mark Forsyth

A ham sandwich is better than nothing. Nothing is better than eternal happiness. So eternal happiness is beaten by a ham sandwich. — Mark Forsyth

Oscar Wilde said that "All crime is vulgar, just as all vulgarity is crime," and then got sent off to Reading Gaol to reconsider and write ballads. — Mark Forsyth

So just to recap, polyptoton is a favorite of Jesus, Shakespeare, and John Lennon. — Mark Forsyth

Wamblecropt is the most exquisite word in the English language. Say it. Each syllable is intolerably beautiful. — Mark Forsyth

Anyone who has ever taken out a mortgage will be unsurprised to learn that it is, literally, a /death pledge/. — Mark Forsyth

Adjectives in English absolutely have to be in this order: opinion-size-age-shape-colour-origin-material-purpose Noun. — Mark Forsyth

Poetry is much more important than the truth, and, if you don't believe that, try using the two methods to get laid. — Mark Forsyth

If somebody learns how to phrase things beautifully, they might be able to persuade you of something that isn't true. — Mark Forsyth

Who needs sense when you have alliteration? — Mark Forsyth

The Bible is chock-a-block with such unnecessary but beautiful antitheses. God, whatever his other failings, is a great rhetorician. — Mark Forsyth

For though one antithesis is grand, a long list of antitheses is divine and is technically known as a progressio. It was a favorite of God and Dickens — Mark Forsyth

Reality changes words far more than words can ever change reality. — Mark Forsyth

Freud said that everything was secretly sexual. But etymologists know that sex is secretly food. — Mark Forsyth

If you look back far enough, everything is stolen and every country invaded. — Mark Forsyth

A dutiful son has to remember not to slouch or swear or, in Hamlet's case, murder the old bat. — Mark Forsyth

Lord, deliver us from what we already knew we wanted. Give us some new desires, the weirder the better. — Mark Forsyth

Oxygen was called flammable air for a while, but it didn't catch on. — Mark Forsyth

Position for his colleague in Secret Intelligence would be just the reverse. Sir Mark was having — Frederick Forsyth

Antanaclasic, which means that it keeps using the same word in different senses. — Mark Forsyth

It is much harder than you might think to show people your bottom. — Mark Forsyth

Most people can improvise in unrhymed dactyls for hours. It's just that you lose all your friends if you do. — Mark Forsyth