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It would no doubt be very sentimental to argue - but I would argue it nevertheless - that the peculiar combination of joy and sadness in bell music - both of clock chimes, and of change-ringing - is very typical of England. It is of a piece with the irony in which English people habitually address one another.

A. N. Wilson

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A. N. Wilson
Age: 74
Born: 1950
Born: January 1
Biographer
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Staffordshire
Andrew Norman Wilson
People
England
Irony
Bell
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Arguing
Bells
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Clock
Address
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Ringing

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I'm boring. My beliefs are neither here nor there.
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We cannot hope for a society in which formal organized religion dies out. But we can stop behaving as if it was worthy of our collective respect.
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The death of any man aged 56 is very sad for his widow and family. And no one would deny that Steve Jobs was a brilliant and highly innovative technician, with great business flair and marketing ability.
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The approach of death certainly concentrates the mind.
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If you know somebody is going to be awfully annoyed by something you write, that's obviously very satisfying, and if they howl with rage or cry, that's honey.
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I am shy to admit that I have followed the advice given all those years ago by a wise archbishop to a bewildered young man: that moments of unbelief 'don't matter,' that if you return to a practice of the faith, faith will return.
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Hitler suffered acutely from meteorism perhaps he did not suffer so acutely as those around him, since meteorism is uncontrolled farting, a condition exacerbated by Hitler's strictly vegetarian diet.
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If you imagine writing 1,000 words a day, which most journalists do, that would be a very long book a year.
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I wanted passionately to be a priest.
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I very much dislike the intolerance and moralism of many Christians, and feel more sympathy with Honest Doubters than with them.
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In general, Hitler embodied the view of any popular newspaper.
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If you read about Mussolini or Stalin or some of these other great monsters of history, they were at it all the time, that they were getting up in the morning very early. They were physically very active. They didn't eat lunch.
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My kind publishers, Toby Mundy and Margaret Stead of Atlantic Books, have commissioned me to write the life of Queen Victoria.
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I don't think you can tell the objective truth about a person. That's why people write novels.
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In the past, I used to counter any such notions by asking myself: 'Would you really want President Hattersley?' I now find that possibility rather cheers me up. With his chubby, Dickensian features and his knowledge of T.H. Green and other harmless leftish political classics, Hattersley might not be such a bad thing after all.
A. N. Wilson
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Truth comes to us mediated by human love.
A. N. Wilson
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It is eerie being all but alone in Westminster Abbey. Without the tourists, there are only the dead, many of them kings and queens. They speak powerfully and put my thoughts into vivid perspective.
A. N. Wilson
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Of all liars the most arrogant are biographers: those who would have us believe, having surveyed a few boxes full of letters, diaries, bank statements and photographs, that they can play at the recording angel and tell the whole truth about another human life.
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Millions of Christians can and do go through life attending church, listening to sermons, reciting the creeds and never confront the seeming contradictions, redaction and myths passed off as verifiable history.
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Anti-Semitism is extremely common.
A. N. Wilson