Quote

I was talking to my publisher in Britain and was told here we are - we are sixty million people and we reckon only four hundred thousand people in Britain really read.

John Gimlette

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

John Gimlette
Age: 61
Born: 1963
Born: January 1
Author
Journalist
Millions
Publisher
Four
Publishers
Talking
Sixty
Read
Britain
Really
Million
People
Hundred
Thousand
Told
Reckon

More quotes by John Gimlette

Image
In both places [Paraguay and Newfoundland] people rise despite everything - both are pretty tough environments.
John Gimlette
Image
I am no apologist for Fidel's [Castro] regime. It is, after all, a totalitarian regime. So I would like to see that change.
John Gimlette
Image
I don't therefore know how to write for the big papers. It must be kids - students - and retired people. And the reality is they are overwhelmed with people sending in their holiday stories and bits and pieces and so on.
John Gimlette
Image
There are no young people who know how to debate, who know how to vote, and who know how to persuade people to vote. And you have seen this in Paraguay and they are reaping the harvest now of fifty years of dictatorship.
John Gimlette
Image
Originally I wanted to be a diplomat, and by attrition I started giving up that idea.
John Gimlette
Image
I have to be careful not to visit one place right after the other and write one book after the other. Because I fear writing the same book all over again. That's why I am taking a break and doing something different this time.
John Gimlette
Image
Paraguay has had a U.S. supermarket boss as its ambassador for a while. He did the job well. He was there because he wanted to be there. Rather than the British diplomat who didn't want to be there.
John Gimlette
Image
Diplomacy was what I wanted to do. From really quite an early age and I think I had a false impression that diplomacy equals travel.
John Gimlette
Image
I wonder if this reason is partly geographical, that talk radio is so much more successful in North America than in Britain? People who are very remote - I'm thinking of Newfoundland - feel very connected though the radio.
John Gimlette
Image
I have a nice little idea from some people I met there who are now in their seventies, and I want to tell their story about the revolution through the eyes of musicians, in fact. The '59 Revolution. And what has happened to them since. It's very much a Cuban story. They haven't fared too well.
John Gimlette
Image
There are 60 million of us [britains] crammed into an area the size of a state. So you don't have that feeling of remoteness at all, ever. And that's reflected in the way our media works, and so on.
John Gimlette
Image
India, to some extent, courses through my blood. My father was brought up there, and my grandfather served there, and so on. We have a very strong family affinity for the place.
John Gimlette
Image
I have real fears for Cuba based on the South American experience. Where you have had such a stern regime, as Fidel's [Castro], there is no culture of politics.
John Gimlette
Image
I am always surprised when people do get upset. Perhaps its just the nutty people who write to newspapers who get upset.
John Gimlette
Image
If you travel in countries like Morocco, and I say that because I have just come from Morocco, if people are shouting at each other in an argument, violence is not going to follow. That would be just so far removed.
John Gimlette
Image
I have dipped into Ian McEwan and so on. I tend not to stick with one writer. But I dip in here and there.
John Gimlette
Image
We don't really listen to what the other person is saying. We have gotten used to information being in such a concentrated form all the time, and so continuously, that conversation somehow seems inadequate for a lot of people, and therefore they can't join in it. You notice how many people can't argue anymore - without getting very upset.
John Gimlette
Image
I would love to write a book that opens people's eyes to the more interesting side.
John Gimlette
Image
People my age and younger do think much more towards Europe. We have to fill the gap sometime - we can't think we are an empire any longer after all.
John Gimlette
Image
I feel better off doing what I know how to do. I feel a strong element of fictional style in travel writing anyway. Some call it creative nonfiction.
John Gimlette