Ian Watson Quotes

I think it's safe to say that 'manliness' was a common theme in my upbringing. It was an assumed status, but - and here's the important bit - it was the Rudyard Kipling kind. The emphasis was on gentlemanly conduct, sportsmanship, fairness and stoicism.

- Ian Watson

I worked with Stanley Kubrick for almost a year back in 1990, trying to develop the screen story for his project 'Artificial Intelligence,' which is about a robot boy who wishes to become a real boy, a future scientific fairy tale inspired in the myth of Pinocchio.

- Ian Watson

It's bad enough being conned into singing an anti-war message by John Lennon when you think you're just wishing everyone a merry Christmas.

- Ian Watson

The fact is that most 'Irish-Americans', in spite of dropping the word 'Irish' into half of all sentences, couldn't find Europe on an atlas, let alone Ireland.

- Ian Watson

Warwick Davies is a cracking actor. The opening scene in the last 'Harry Potter' film, where he plays a captured Griphook, is mesmerising. His pacing is sublime, and the menace and regret he builds into the scene is fantastic.

- Ian Watson

My father-in-law just happens to be a global procurement guru. Now retired, he was the global head of procurement for some of the biggest companies in the world as well as our very own treasury.

- Ian Watson

Every joke in 'The Office' was unexpected. I cringed; I could hardly look. I cried with laughter.

- Ian Watson

People with a lot of money aren't in the business of throwing it away, and those paying footballers' wages, organising parking spaces for dead sharks, and even, dare I say it, buying iPads, are doing it because, for them, it's worth the money.

- Ian Watson

Tokyo in the late 1960s seemed to be like one of the futures that science fiction presents. Here was the proto- super-technology of the future, electronically, robotically, blahblahblah, intercut with traditional Japanese cultural patterns, Shinto patterns.

- Ian Watson

The only time I even entertain the tiniest element of religion is for Christmas carols.

- Ian Watson

My wife will automatically quote and compare the price of diesel at every petrol station we drive by, like she's got oil-based Tourette's.

- Ian Watson

I'm going to do the old 'plaster removal' technique and just get the pain over with in one go: 'Life's Too Short' isn't funny to me.

- Ian Watson

That iPad you just bought. Do you care that it cost a few pence to manufacture? No. It's cost you several hundred pounds because somebody else was willing to pay that much for it. If they weren't... it wouldn't.

- Ian Watson

I think we are living in paradise with regards to the ways we can amuse ourselves, communicate. We have such a richness of possibilities.

- Ian Watson

Dad's funeral was standing room only; most in attendance were strangers to me. At the back, a lone Marine stood silently, then left. People told me he'd saved their life or helped them in their darkest hour.

- Ian Watson

When I go to the interviews and sit before a prospective employer, I'm going to try and look as employable as I can.

- Ian Watson

I'm working class. Not because my family have always been skint or because I'm from the grim north, but because I am from a class of people who believe in work. In paying their way.

- Ian Watson

I believe I've got the best of both worlds - a modern man with old fashioned values. I'm happy to be a house husband but won't let my wife carry her own bag.

- Ian Watson

Basically, I tend to see the world differently to other people, and I write books and stories to alter the imagination of people so that they also see the world in a different way.

- Ian Watson