Alan Partridge · 320 pages
Rating: (6.4K votes)
“Putting a damp spoon back in the bowl is the tea-drinking equivalent of sharing a needle. And I did not want to end up with the tea-drinking equivalent of AIDS.”
― Alan Partridge, quote from I, Partridge: We Need to Talk About Alan
“Hello, Alan." said Carol's dad Keith.
"Hello, Alan." said Carol's mum, Stella, not bothering to think of a greeting of her own.”
― Alan Partridge, quote from I, Partridge: We Need to Talk About Alan
“The human brain comprises 70% water, which means it's a similar consistency to tofu. Picture that for a second - a blob of tofu the size and shape of a brain. Now imagine taking that piece of tofu, and forcing your thumbs into it hard. It would burst wouldn't it?
Okay, now imagine those thumbs weren't thumbs but thumb-shaped pieces of bad news. And there weren't two of them, they were about half a dozen. Imagine you were forcing all six pieces of bad news - a divorce, multiple career snubs, accusations from the family of a dead celebrity, estranged kids, borderline homelessness, that kind of thing - into a piece of tofu.
With me? Good. Now imagine it's not tofu, but a human brain. And they're not pieces of bad news but six human thumbs. That's what happened to me. In 2001, my brain had half a dozen thumbs pushed into it.”
― Alan Partridge, quote from I, Partridge: We Need to Talk About Alan
“I’d spend hours in HMVs, Virgin Megastores and second-hand record shops staffed by greasy-haired 40-year-olds dressed as 20-year-olds, listening to contemporary music of every genre – Britrock, heavy maiden, gang rap, brakebeat. And I came to a startling but unshakeable conclusion: no genuinely good music has been created since 1988.”
― Alan Partridge, quote from I, Partridge: We Need to Talk About Alan
“For three long days, I felt the cold hand of death on my shoulder. Lost in the depths of despair I tried to figure out what I had done to deserve this. I wasn't an evil person. The worst thing I'd ever done was kick a pig - School trip to Heston Farm, 1964, I maintain it was self-defence.”
― Alan Partridge, quote from I, Partridge: We Need to Talk About Alan
“The father, Trevor, was an asthmatic, but what he lacked in being able to breath quietly, he more than made up for with parental skills.”
― Alan Partridge, quote from I, Partridge: We Need to Talk About Alan
“Sadly, I can't say the same for my Father, who is probably in a different place - Hell.”
― Alan Partridge, quote from I, Partridge: We Need to Talk About Alan
“He is also a keen cook, gardener and birder. He has no middle fingers on one hand, so he can't swear but is permanently doing the heavy metal sign.”
― Alan Partridge, quote from I, Partridge: We Need to Talk About Alan
“I woke with a start. At first I assumed I’d trumped myself awake again .”
― Alan Partridge, quote from I, Partridge: We Need to Talk About Alan
“I woke with a start, at first I thought I had trumped myself awake again - it was summer so there was lots of fresh vegetables in our diet. But as I listened through the darkness I realized that something far worse was going on. My mother and father were having the row to end all rows. A sudden shot of fear ripped through my pre-pubic body. And now I did trump. The noise fizzled out of my back passage like a child calling for help. That child was me.”
― Alan Partridge, quote from I, Partridge: We Need to Talk About Alan
“Snowflakes fell from the sky like tiny pieces of a snowman who had stood on a landmine.”
― Alan Partridge, quote from I, Partridge: We Need to Talk About Alan
“Like a good-looking John Merrick, mine was a face that looked really shit.”
― Alan Partridge, quote from I, Partridge: We Need to Talk About Alan
“Sport, on the other hand, is straightforward. In badminton, if you win a rally, you get one point. In volleyball, if you win a rally, you get one point. In tennis, if you win a rally, you get 15 points for the first or second rallies you’ve won in that game, or 10 for the third, with an indeterminate amount assigned to the fourth rally other than the knowledge that the game is won, providing one player is two 10-point (or 15-point) segments clear of his opponent. It’s clear and simple.”
― Alan Partridge, quote from I, Partridge: We Need to Talk About Alan
“As I write these words I’m noisily chomping away on not one, but two Murray Mints. I’ve a powerful suck and soon they’ll be whittled away to nothing. But for the time being at least they have each other. For the time being, they are brothers. Which is more than could be said for me, for I was an only child. I”
― Alan Partridge, quote from I, Partridge: We Need to Talk About Alan
“If I was feeling like a challenge, I'd kick out the plug, turn the taps on and see if I could maintain the exact water level. It was a bit like balancing the clutch in an old Mini Metro. Although tricky at first, by the time I checked out I could find the bath's biting point within three minutes. Satisfying? Just bit.”
― Alan Partridge, quote from I, Partridge: We Need to Talk About Alan
“Tears streamed down my face. I was so happy I wanted to shout it from the rooftop. But at the same time I knew that that afternoon's downpour would have made the slate tiles so slippery that achieving any kind of purchase would have been impossible.”
― Alan Partridge, quote from I, Partridge: We Need to Talk About Alan
“He wouldn’t charm her. She’d almost forgot what his kiss tasted like., felt like. She only remembered it when she drifted into dreams. Then it became so vivid, so real. To her mortification, she always felt a little thrill. Her life had been filled with gentlemen of the finest quality. James Sterling was like none of them, he was unpolished. A diamond in the rough. A scoundrel. A pirate.”
― Jade Parker, quote from To Catch a Pirate
“I am still alive then. That may come in useful.”
― Samuel Beckett, quote from Molloy
“Every case is different, and how we deal with every case is different. But what’s the same is we work it, we do the job, and we take the risks the job demands. That’s it.”
― J.D. Robb, quote from New York to Dallas
“Although what I have basically been doing about the rain is ignoring it, to tell the truth.
How I do that is by walking in it.
I did not fail to notice that those last two sentences must certainly look like a contradiction, by the way.
Even if they are on such thing.
One can very agreeably ignore a rain by walking in it.
In fact it is when one allows a rain to prevent one from walking in it that one is failing to ignore it.”
― David Markson, quote from Wittgenstein's Mistress
“And I guess that's when I decided being good at something didn't mean you had to do it. Just 'cause something's easy doesn't make it right.”
― Julie Murphy, quote from Dumplin'
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