Tony Parsons > Quotes

“to love means to realize there is a time to let the beloved one go”
― Tony Parsons, Man and Boy

“Cancer seems a high price to pay for an innocuous-looking habit. You get into smoking and you are robbed of the last 25 years of your life. Some cocky souls will say, 'Ah yes, but they are the worst 25 years.' Nobody feels like that in a cancer ward. There are no cocky souls in a cancer ward. But there's a lot of pain, not just of the excruciating physical kind that they shoot you full of morphine to smother. There are a lot of tears. All round. It is hard to say goodbye to the people you love. And it's scary. Cancer wards have a way of knocking the cockiness out of you. And for what? Another cigarette?”
― Tony Parsons

“It's painful and it's messy. But sometimes you just have to make the break and start again.”
― Tony Parsons, Man and Wife

“Love means knowing when to let go.”
― Tony Parsons, Man and Boy

“Sometimes we are only aware of how happy we are when the moment has passed. But now and again, if we are very lucky, we are aware of happiness when it is actually happening.”
― Tony Parsons, Man and Boy

“I once read somewhere that, in any relationship, the one who cares the least is the one with all the power.”
― Tony Parsons, Man and Boy

“It's funny. You love something and one day it's suddenly gone or changed or lost forever. But somehow that doesn't stop your loving. Maybe that's how you know it's the real thing.”
― Tony Parsons, One for My Baby

“Learn to trust your instincts. Only something dead goes with the tide. Only something living can go against it.”
― Tony Parsons, The French Dresser.

“It can't always be a honeymoon”
― Tony Parsons, Man and Boy

“I love you but I'm not in love with you”
― Tony Parsons, Man and Boy

“I'm not saying it's what I would have wanted. But don't you see? We fuck up our lives again and again and it's always our children who pick up the bill. We move on to new relationships, always starting over, always thinking we've got another chance to get it right, it's the kids from all these broken marriages who pay the price. They - my son, your daughters, all the millions like them - are carrying around wounds that are going to last a lifetime. It has to stop.”
― Tony Parsons, Man and Boy

“She wasn't the kind who cared about signs, she moved through the world as if she had a right to be there - anywhere, everywhere. Like a woman in a book, like a girl in a song.”
― Tony Parsons, Stories We Could Tell

“If you are always craving, always wanting, never satisfied, never happy with what you've got, you end up even more lost and lonely than you do...”
― Tony Parsons, Man and Boy

“Everything ends. It does. Sooner or later. This - all this - it has to end sometime.”
― Tony Parsons, Stories We Could Tell

“There was an intelligence about him (Joe Strummer) that allowed his band to change and evolve, just as Johnny Rotten and the Sex Pistols were disappearing up their own bondage trousers. And there was a generosity about Strummer, too, a warmth and humanity about the guy. He was a brilliant musician, a beautiful man, and a charismatic artist. There is a part of me that bitterly resents the fact that the Clash never replaced the Rolling Stones in rock music's hall of heroes. But the Clash were not about milking if for a lifetime...I thought they were the greatest band I had ever seen. And, half a lifetime on, in a large part of my soul, I still do...They changed lives. They certainly changed mine. Because they made me believe that, with passion and commitment and a bit of fire in your belly, you could be exactly the person you wanted to be.”
― Tony Parsons

“Sometimes I think that love is a case of mistaken identity.”
― Tony Parsons, One for My Baby

“Dont feel too bad, Harry. People break-up everyday, its not the end of the world..”
― Tony Parsons

“...all that we do is governed by the law of opposites in which every so-called positive act is exactly and equally balanced by its opposite.;”
― Tony Parsons

“What's your name?'Leon said, when waht he meant was - may I love you for ever?
And she told him.”
― Tony Parsons, Stories We Could Tell

“Rouz je bila na mojoj strani onako kako niko nikada nije bio na mojoj strani. Rouz je bila dobrovoljac. Bilo joj je stalo do mene. Voleci me, ona me je oslobodila. Bio sam slobodan da budem ono sto jesam. Nije u meni videla samo coveka kakav jesam, nego i coveka kakav bi mogao da budem. Voleci me, ucinila je da poverujem da bi moji snovi mogli da postanu stvarnost.”
― Tony Parsons, One for My Baby

“Don't you see?" he said. "This could go on for another five years, another ten years, and then where would we be? You want to grow old waiting for something that's never going to happen? Is that what you want?”
― Tony Parsons, My Favourite Wife

“And it felt like every time I turned around, somebody was either dying or walking out.”
― Tony Parsons, Men From The Boys

“Sometimes the fog in his eyes would clear, that fog caused by the pain and the killers of pain, and when it cleared, I saw regret and fear in those eyes swimming with tears and I was convinced that this was it, this was the end, this was surely the end.”
― Tony Parsons, Man and Boy

“Не можеш да даваш на доведеното си дете само нежност и одобрение, защото никой родител не прави това. И все пак нямаш властта да порицаваш детето по начини, присъщ за истинските родители.
Вторите родители - тези,които дават най-доброто от себе си - искат да бъдат харесвани. Истинските родители не изпитват нужда от това.
Защото знаят, че са обичани.
Това е любов, която се дава безусловно и без резерви. Един родител трябва да направи нещо наистина много лошо, за да пропилее любовта на своето дете. Вторият родител не получава такъв вид любов.”
― Tony Parsons, Man and Wife

“Then they lay there in silence for a while, listening to the rain, watching it come straight down, feeling it cool their sweating faces. You couldn't avoid all of it, not with the missing roof, but after being chase by Teds, it was so refreshing that Terry sighed. And he thought how good it was to be still, to be quiet for once, to be with people you knew so well that there was no real need to talk, and to just feel the sweet kick of the sulphate in your veins, to enjoy that rush of pure euphoria, and to let it all go for a while”
― Tony Parsons, Stories We Could Tell

“... he was totally in thrall to the face of the girl in front of him. She stunned him. She paralysed him. Just being in the presence of that face made him pause, his tongue tied with self-consciousness. But she made it easy for him”
― Tony Parsons, Stories We Could Tell

“I think that you can use up your love. I think you can blow it all on one person. You can love so much, so deeply, that there is nothing left for anyone else.”
― Tony Parsons, One for My Baby

“Lako je voleti nekoga ko je na vasoj strani.”
― Tony Parsons, One for My Baby

“Love is what's left when being in love has gone, okay? It's when you care about someone and you hope they're happy, but you're not under any illusions about them. Maybe that kind of love is not exciting and passionate and all those things that fade with time. All those things that you're so keen on. But in the end it's the only kind of love that really matters.”
― Tony Parsons, Man and Boy

“And then the old man was standing in the doorway, still in his white coat and his French Foreign Legion hat, blinking at his wife and his son and his son’s girlfriend, young Misty.
“Guess what?” Terry’s mum said, as if she had been saving this up for a long time. “Guess what, Granddad?”
Yes, his father looked ancient these days. But when he heard the news and it had started to sink in, that kind, exhausted face lit up with a smile, and it was a smile that Terry knew would last the old man for years.”
― Tony Parsons, Stories We Could Tell