6 Quotes & Sayings By Richard Hughes

Richard Hughes was born in 1906 at Cwmtwrch, Carmarthenshire, Wales. He was educated at St David's College, Lampeter, and St John's College, Oxford. From 1928 to 1933 he worked first as a correspondent for the "Nation" newspaper and then joined the staff of "Time", where he was appointed European editor in 1938. He returned to London in 1945 after World War II service with the British army Read more

He became general-staff correspondent for London newspapers in 1948, wrote feature articles for "Vogue", and served as literary editor for "The Sunday Times". His first book, "The Royal Family", appeared in 1951, followed by "Brighton Rock" (1953). Other works include "The Green Hat" (1956), "A Voyage Round My Father" (1957), "The Innocent" (1958), and "The Story of a Novelist" (1959).

1
Being nearly four years old, she was certainly a child: and children are human (if one allows the term "human" a wide sense): but she had not altogether ceased to be a baby: and babies are of course not human--they are animals, and have a very ancient and ramified culture, as cats have, and fishes, and even snakes: the same in kind as these, but much more complicated and vivid, since babies are, after all, one of the most developed species of the lower vertebrates. In short, babies have minds which work in terms and categories of their own which cannot be translated into the terms and categories of the human mind. It is true that they look human--but not so human, to be quite fair, as many monkeys. Subconsciously, too, every one recognizes they are animals--why else do people always laugh when a baby does some action resembling the human, as they would at a praying mantis? If the baby was only a less-developed man, there would be nothing funny in it, surely. . Richard Hughes
2
Mathias shrugged. After all, a criminal lawyer is not concerned with facts. He is concerned with probabilities. It is the novelist who is concerned with facts, whose job it is to say what a particular man did do on a particular occasion: the lawyer does not, cannot be expected to go further than show what the ordinary man would be most likely to do under presumed circumstances. Richard Hughes
3
Middle age snuffs out more talent than even wars or sudden deaths do. Richard Hughes
4
All that non-fiction can do is answer questions. It's fiction's business to ask them. Richard Hughes
5
Once he got bitten, and they all wept bitterly, expecting to see a spectacular death-agony; but he just went off into the bush and probably ate something, for he came back in a few days quite cock-a-hoop and as ready to eat snakes as ever. Richard Hughes