KeenBrain
KeenBrain
KeenBrain

Jonathan Raban Quotes


Share this page on

Quotes by Jonathan Raban

Showing 1-10 of 25 Quotes by Jonathan Raban

Seattle was built out on pilings over the sea, and at high tide the whole city seemed to come afloat like a ship lifting free from a mud berth and swaying in its chains.

~Jonathan Raban

Topics: None

Keywords: None


Suggest an Edit


Cite the source


Save to Favorites


Collect


The trouble with ghostwriting is that it raises the issue of whether the president is in a state of diminished responsibility for what he says. Does he actually grasp the implications of the words he speaks?

~Jonathan Raban

Topics: None

Keywords: None


Suggest an Edit


Cite the source


Save to Favorites


Collect


At night, what you see is a city, because all you see is lights. By day, it doesn't look like a city at all. The trees out-number the houses. And that's completely typical of Seattle. You can't quite tell: is it a city, is it a suburb, is the forest growing back?

~Jonathan Raban

Topics: None

Keywords: None


Suggest an Edit


Cite the source


Save to Favorites


Collect


Every White House has had its intellectuals, but very few presidents have been intellectuals themselves - Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Woodrow Wilson, the list more or less stops there.

~Jonathan Raban

Topics: None

Keywords: None


Suggest an Edit


Cite the source


Save to Favorites


Collect


In an underdeveloped country don't drink the water. In a developed country don't breathe the air.

~Jonathan Raban

Topics: None

Keywords: None


Suggest an Edit


Cite the source


Save to Favorites


Collect


Over emphatic negatives always suggest that what is being denied may be what is really being asserted.

~Jonathan Raban

Topics: None

Keywords: None


Suggest an Edit


Cite the source


Save to Favorites


Collect


By the end of the 1980s, Seattle had taken on the dangerous lustre of a promised city. The rumour had gone out that if you had failed in Detroit you might yet succeed in Seattle - and that if you'd succeeded in Seoul, you could succeed even better in Seattle... Seattle was the coming place. So I joined the line of hopefuls.

~Jonathan Raban

Topics: None

Keywords: None


Suggest an Edit


Cite the source


Save to Favorites


Collect


Seattle is this curious liberal 'island.'

~Jonathan Raban

Topics: None

Keywords: None


Suggest an Edit


Cite the source


Save to Favorites


Collect


Simply as a writer of books I'm thrilled and proud that Seattle should have raised, on a public vote, sufficient money to build a central library, and moreover to rebuild every other library in the city: 28 of them.

~Jonathan Raban

Topics: None

Keywords: None


Suggest an Edit


Cite the source


Save to Favorites


Collect


Because Washington state now votes by mail, elections here tend to play out, at an agonizingly slow speed, over many days and, sometimes, weeks.

~Jonathan Raban

Topics: None

Keywords: None


Suggest an Edit


Cite the source


Save to Favorites


Collect


Biography

Nationality: British

Type: Author

Born: June 14th, 1942

Links

Find Jonathan Raban on Amazon

Related Authors

James Allen
J. G. Ballard
George Eliot
Ian Fleming
Neil Gaiman
George Orwell
Dorothy L. Sayers
Virginia Woolf

Popular Authors

Erma Bombeck Thich Nhat Hanh Zora Neale Hurston Martin Luther Jim Rohn J. K. Rowling Twiggy Denzel Washington

Change your beliefs...change your life.

Get a related quote or insight every day.

(it's 100% free)

Follow Us On

Today's Birthdays

1694 - Voltaire

1768 - Friedrich Schleiermacher

1787 - Bryan Procter

1863 - Arthur Quiller-Couch

1870 - Alexander Berkman

1886 - Harold Nicolson

1889 - Hugh Kingsmill

1898 - Rene Magritte

1904 - Coleman Hawkins

1907 - Jim Bishop

Birthdays on November 21st
All Birthdays

Popular Topics

Equality Food History Jealousy Mom Moving On Romantic Valentine's Day