Harry Melling Quotes

“I've also just finished filming the role of Robert Brown in 'Just William,' which is due to transmit on BBC One at Christmas.”

“All my books reflect travel adventures of some kind, and all have a soul: a spiritual or mystical underpinning.”

“Where do we record the passing of wildlife? Who mourns the silent deaths of the small?”

“To run with the wolf was to run in the shadows, the dark ray of life, survival and instinct. A fierceness that was both proud and lonely, a tearing, a howling, a hunger and thirst. Blessed are they who hunger and thirst. A strength that would die fighting, kicking, screaming, that wouldn't stop until the last breath had been wrung from its body. The will to take one's place in the world. To say 'I am here.' To say 'I am.”

“You can't really know what you are made of until you are tested.”

“Hope burns eternal in the human heart.”

“Too often fantasy is not a rich elaboration of life designed to enhance our existence, rather it is our pell-mell escape from life with the intent of exiting this existence. And the most imaginative fantasy of all is to somehow think that I can do that in the first place.”

“This was the sort of ebullience and élan I prayed for when I felt the desire to write. I used to sit down and wait for this to happen. But it never did happen- not this way. It happened afterwards, sometimes when I had left the machine and gone for a walk. Yes, suddenly it would come on, like an attack, pell-mell, from every direction, a veritable inundation, an avalanche- and there I was, helpless, miles away from the typewriter, not a piece of paper in my pocket.”

“In the case of the creative mind, it seems to me, the intellect has withdrawn its watchers from the gates, and the ideas rush in pell-mell, and only then does it review and inspect the multitude. You worthy critics, or whatever you may call yourselves, are ashamed or afraid of the momentary and passing madness which is found in all real creators, the longer or shorter duration of which distinguishes the thinking artist from the dreamer. Hence your complaints of unfruitfulness, for you reject too soon and discriminate too severely.”

“It seems a bad thing and detrimental to the creative work of the mind if Reason makes to close an examination of the ideas as they come pouring in -at the very gateway, as it were. Looked at in isolation, a thought may seem very trivial or very fantastic; but it may be made important by another thought that comes after it, and in conjunction with other thoughts that may seem equally absurd, it may serve to form a most effective link. Reason cannot form any opinion on all this unless it retains the thought long enough to look at it in connection with the others. On the other hand, where there is a creative mind, Reason -so it seems to me- relaxes its watch upon the gates, and the ideas rush in pell-mell, and only then does it look them through and examine them in a mass.”