Julian Fellowes Quotes

Sometimes the weekend gets hijacked by work, but as my mother would say, this is the right problem.

Lust, that state commonly known as 'being in love,' is a kind of madness. It is a distortion of reality so remarkable that it should, by rights, enable most of us to understand the other forms of lunacy with the sympathy of fellow-sufferers. But, paradoxically, mad and suffering as one is, and the heat of the flame, few of us are glad as we feel that passion slip away No, while most people have been at their unhappiest when in love, it is nevertheless the state the human being yearns for above all.

When you are desperate to get someone who isn't all that interested in you, you lay siege as hard as you can.

Harsh reality is always better than false hope.

The business of life is learning that you can't lay down the terms.

Vulgarity is no substitute for wit.

I never know which is worse: the sorrow when you hit the bird or the shame when you miss it.

If we don't respect the past, we'll find it harder to build a future.

If you are lucky, you have your moment. But it is never more than a moment. You have to enjoy it while it lasts.

To me, all success is a delightful surprise, since one can absolutely never predict it.

Leave three Englishmen in a room and they will invent a rule that prevents a fourth joining them.

Life is a game in which the player must appear ridiculous.

Success means your thoughts are worthy of everyones consideration.

The English country house is certainly an icon of British culture.

Every writer has to make an emotional journey from artist sitting in attic to being part of a business. The writer of a film is like Tinkerbell. You are only there because people believe in you. The moment they dont, because youre a pain the arse, youve lost.

Nothing is harder to dramatize than happiness.

There are many nations that have perfected a particular room. You know, you have the French drawing-room, the Austrian ball room, the German dining room, and I think the library is a room the English get right.

We are usually undone by our lack of understanding of ourselves.

My mother converted to Catholicism to marry my father.

People tend to view history as if it were another planet and think the modern world was invented in 1963. I don't agree.

What is a week-end? Maggie Smith in Downton Abbey.

Most of the soap operas always use the Christmas special to kill huge quantities of their characters. So they have trams coming off their rails, or cars slamming into each other or burning buildings. It's a general clean-out.

What you have to understand about period drama is that it's 'history light.

School visits are something I do fairly often: I always say to the students that somebody has got to end up with the interesting careers, so why not them?

War makes early risers of us all.