Tony Parsons Quotes

Learn to trust your instincts. Only something dead goes with the tide. Only something living can go against it.

The dream we are living has absolutely no purpose other than our awakening.

I am all for cracking down on inappropriate digital behaviour. Too often the connected world is an excuse for some coward hiding behind a keyboard to bully someone else.

The tattooed nation will live to regret this voluntary disfigurement.

The most convincing argument against early parenthood is that you are in a relationship that is likely to fall apart before that child grows up.

My parents have been dead for many years, and when your folks are gone there is nobody standing between you and eternity.

People are always surprised at what a nice guy I am.

Sometimes we are only aware of how happy we are when the moment has passed. But now and again, if we are very lucky, we are aware of happiness when it is actually happening.

The thing to remember about Phuket is it's very beach-oriented and relaxed. The trendiest beach is Koh Sirey, which is full of groovy places to have a cocktail and watch the sun go down.

Tattoos are so widespread, so ugly and so very, very permanent. You can, in theory, have them removed - but a large chunk of your living flesh will go with it.

to love means to realize there is a time to let the beloved one go

When you are a journalist in the music business, as I was, you end up dying or going to the gym - I chose the gym.

Home is oneness, home is my original nature. It is right here, simply in what is. There is nowhere else I have to go, and nothing else I have to become.

It's painful and it's messy. But sometimes you just have to make the break and start again.

When you have a kid, money matters.

Love means knowing when to let go.

You have to give kids from ordinary families a ladder. You have to show them there's a way out.

My teenage years were spent trying to look like Rod Stewart - I ended up looking like Dave Hill from Slade.

I box for four hours a week and my diet is pretty healthy.

My principal motivation is supporting my family, which is not a bad reason for getting up in the morning. That's always been my motivation - to take care of the people who rely on me.

I hate Nassau and the Bahamas. It's one of those places I'd always wanted to visit since reading Ian Fleming but it was full of casinos with Americans in shorts.

I don't think much of anything I wrote before the age of 30.

A tattoo doesn't make you look like an individual.

I am a sweet old softy, but it took toughness to get through what I went through.

The thing I care about is my weight - I'm as fanatical about it as a member of Girls Aloud. I weigh myself every morning. I know exactly what I want to be - 82kg - and I try to stick to it.

It felt natural. That is what I remember most about becoming a father halfway through my 20s. As if Mother Nature was giving me the big thumbs up.

My parents gave up a lot to bring me up in the little house on the prairie, and I wasn't prepared to make those sacrifices, nor was the generation before me and the generation after.

Grammar schools are public schools without the sodomy.

I have found having my dad as my North Star has worked well for me.

I once read somewhere that, in any relationship, the one who cares the least is the one with all the power.

I can't think of a bigger waste of police time than chasing somebody who has said something offensive on Twitter.

The British - who rarely start a fight, but always know how to finish it - have nothing to be ashamed of.

I do tend to look back to my parents generation and think wow! what a great way to be, to live with one person for a lifetime, to bring your kids up in these really solid families.

It can't always be a honeymoon

...all that we do is governed by the law of opposites in which every so-called positive act is exactly and equally balanced by its opposite.