Quotes from A. N. Wilson

I think that if you can't be loyal to the Church, it's best to get out.

If only Queen Elizabeth II had the intellectual, political and linguistic skills of Queen Elizabeth I, many people would support giving her some of the powers of an elected president.

Tennyson seems to be the patron saint of the wishy washies, which is perhaps why I admire him so much, not only as a poet, but as a man.

I should prefer to have a politician who regularly went to a massage parlour than one who promised a laptop computer for every teacher.

We tell ourselves that God is dead, when what we mean is that God is Dad, and we wish him dead.

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.

Fear of death has never played a large part in my consciousness - perhaps unimaginative of me.

'In Memoriam' has been my companion for all my grownup life.

I very much dislike the intolerance and moralism of many Christians, and feel more sympathy with Honest Doubters than with them.

I've never had a study in my life. I'm like Jane Austen - I work on the corner of the dining table.

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.

It seems astonishing to be paid for indulging in pure pleasure. For me to go to Coburg is rather as if a trainspotter was sent for a few weeks to Swindon or a chocoholic asked on holiday by Green and Black.

The approach of death certainly concentrates the mind.

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.

Anti-Semitism is extremely common.

I think I became a Catholic to annoy my father.

Nearly all monster stories depend for their success on Jack killing the Giant, Beowulf or St. George slaying the Dragon, Harry Potter triumphing over the basilisk. That is their inner grammar, and the whole shape of the story leads towards it.

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.

Watching a whole cluster of friends, and my own mother, die over quite a short space of time convinced me that purely materialist 'explanations' for our mysterious human existence simply won't do - on an intellectual level.

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.

IQ in general has improved since tests first began. Psychologists think that this is because modern life becomes ever more complicated.

I believe the collapse of the House of Windsor is tied in with the collapse of the Church of England.

My kind publishers, Toby Mundy and Margaret Stead of Atlantic Books, have commissioned me to write the life of Queen Victoria.

I suppose if I'd got a brilliant first and done research I might still be a don today, but I hope not. People become dons because they are incapable of doing anything else in life.