Stephen Frears Quotes

It is not so much that I am a blue-blooded oligarch: I just don't feel like an oligarch.

… an army of Gatsbys wanting not to overturn the social order but only to belong to the upper crust.

I come from the south, so you're useless, and you're a bit pathetic. That's the first thing that the northerners think of you. You're also from the city, so you are used to having your cappuccinos and your luxuries and getting your chicken from a plastic packet.

The wealthy don't have any sense of humor. It's not like the English, where the theater is perhaps the one place where they have a sense of humor about themselves.

I spend the majority of my time in New York and LA. I feel like a large part of my following and my fans are probably in New York and LA because of the work that I do is very New York-LA-centric. So people do recognize me. But it's nothing overwhelming at all.

We adore titles and heredities in our hearts and ridicule them with our mouths. This is our democratic privilege.

I like Toronto; the people are really chill.

There are those who collect the refuse of the public streets, but in order to be received into the band it is necessary to have been born one of the Hereditary Confederacy of Superfluity Removers and Abandoned Oddment Gatherers.

I love the city. I love the energy of New York and what happens here. But I'm very happy I don't live in the city on a daily basis, because I really do spend a great deal of my time, when I'm not on the road, in my studio - everyday, everyday, everyday.

What is the distinguishing mark of an aristocrat?' she asked him suddenly.'Reverence,' he replied.

Yeah, I love living in New York, man, and people who live in New York, we wear that fact like a badge right on our sleeve because we know that fact impresses everybody! I was in Vietnam. So what? I live in New York!

I really like to have a coffee shop next door and be able to smoke a cigarette. I'm a city person; I regard nature as something hostile and problematic. I do enjoy it when I get out there, but it is mostly against my will. It's a bit of an awkward thing to say - people really don't like it when you say that.

Happy the land where the writers are sad, the merchants satisfied, the rich melancholic, and the populace content.

Living in New York City gives people real incentives to want things that nobody else wants.

There is something about big cities that turns me on, and for whatever mysterious reason, places like New York and Paris inspire me. I think it's because cities represent civilization, and as crime-ridden and broken down as some of them are, it's still better than skipping through a meadow.

Weird Weekends set out to discover the genuinely odd in the most ordinary setting. To me, it's almost a privilege to be welcomed into these communities and to shine a light on them and, maybe, through my enthusiasm, to get people to reveal more of themselves than they may have intended. The show is laughing at me, adrift in their world, as much as at them. I don't have to play up that stuff. I'm not a matinee idol disguised as a nerd

By comparison with other less hectic days, the city is unconfortable and inconvenient; but New Yorkers tempramentally do not crave comfort and convenience - if they did they would live elsewhere.

The Englishman foxtrots as he fox-hunts, with all his being, through thickets, through ditches, over hedges, through chiffons, through waiters, over saxophones, to the victorious finish; and who goes home depends on how many the ambulance will accommodate.

If I miss anything, it's being able to hang out in the city of New York meeting people and talking to them on the corner.

There are certainly numberless women of fashion who consider it perfectly natural to go miles down Fifth Avenue, or Madison Avenue, yet for whom a voyage of half a dozen blocks to east or west would be an adventure, almost a dangerous impairment of good breeding.

Any real New Yorker is a you-name-it-we-have-it-snob whose heart brims with sympathy for the millions of unfortunates who through misfortune, misguidedness or pure stupidity live anywhere else in the world.

I have discovered the missing link between the anthropoid apes and civilized men. It's us!

In Manhattan, when you're out of the front door, you're on, and you have to be ready to smile and speak to people.

New York is not like London, a now-and-then place to many people. You can either not live in New York or not live anyplace else. One is either a lover or hater.

I love hip-hop music, ... It's rebel music is how I like to speak about it. Hip-hop and reggae come from the same community as far as class...they both come from the bottom of society.