Darryl Pinckney Quotes

There are no human beings whose sense of social identity is fully and exclusively given for themselves by the membership of the working (or any other) class

I don't feel that Jewish people have a class.

In the 'Garnethill' trilogy, people always forget that Maureen O'Donnell's dad was a journalist and she did art history at uni and her brother did law, but no-one ever thinks they're middle-class - they're just working class because they speak with accents.

I grew up with Jilly and Tamsin driving Volvos. But I wasn't one of them... I always felt more comfortable with Cockney and working-class people. My heroes were the Beatles and people like Michael Caine.

I'm every bourgeois nightmare - a Cockney with intelligence and a million dollars.

I want to play trailer trash; I swear to God.

You're either ghetto or you're not.

People tend to think that I know less about what I'm talking about than I actually do - usually people who think that all aristocrats are stupid.

Fashion has a political role insofar as following it can give you the impression to belonging to a certain social group or a private club.

People assume I'm posh because I'm one of the acting dames. I grew up in Tottenham and didn't used to speak like I do now.

I have known people who are working class or craftsmen, who happen to be more intellectual than professors.

Eccentricity is usually owned by middle-class and upper-class people. If you are working class and eccentric, then you're just mad.

I think that, often, actors represent what they're not. You get people who define the aristocracy who are not aristocratic - they're lower-middle class or working class. An awful lot of your so-called angry young actors have grown up in extreme bourgeois comfort. It really is surprisingly common.

Not that I am hugely working class, but in the U.K. I'm always perceived, casting-wise, as being working class.

Working class people vote Tory because they think it makes them look a bit posh.

I'm proud of my middle-class background because that's how I've grown up. I have my values and sensibilities.

Nature's noblemen are everywhere,--in town and out of town, gloved and rough-handed, rich and poor. Prejudice against a lord, because he is a lord, is losing the chance of finding a good fellow, as much as prejudice against a ploughman because he is a ploughman.

To the man-in-the-street, who, I'm sorry to say, is a keen observer of life. The word Intellectual suggests straight away. A man who's untrue to his wife.

I'm a working class lad.

Americans ... do not naturally apply the term "bourgeois" to themselves, or to anyone else for that matter. They do like to call themselves middle class, but that does not carry with it any determinate spiritual content. ... The term "middle class" does not have any of the many opposites that bourgeois has, such as aristocrat, saint, hero, or artist - all good.

Harold Wilson is a petty bourgeois and will remain so in spirit even if they make him a Viscount.

What is Africa, anyway? Even I don't know what Africa is, entirely. But I know that it's not some of these simplified sound bites you hear in America.

When I go to a bar or a party, I feel like a student invited me to the kegger, and I actually ended up going. And everyone's shocked: "Oh, my god, professor, I didn't know you were actually going to come!" That's me in any circle, really, especially when I hang out with my brother's friends.

My folks were English . . . we were too poor to be British.

Scratch a socialist and you find a snob.