Christopher Wood (writer)

Christopher Hovelle Wood (born 5 November 1935 – 9 May 2015) was an English screenwriter and novelist best known for the Confessions series of novels and films which he wrote as 'Timothy Lea'. Under his own name, he adapted two James Bond novels for the screen: The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker.

Quotes

• An Oxford man walks down the street and thinks that he owns it, a Cambridge man walks down the street and doesn't give a toss who owns it.
  • James Bond, The Spy I Loved. Twenty First Century Publishers Ltd, 2006, pg. 58-59.

• It was always the same in my experience, the greatest libertines make the most suspicious fathers, and show me a mother who would part her legs for a dray horse and you will find her daughter has a chastity belt before a christening mug. Why they deny their progeny what they find so pleasant themselves I will never conceive.
  • John Adam - Samurai. Sphere paperbacks, 1972 edition (originally published by Arlington books in 1971). pg. 31-32 (chapter 2).

• The crowd pressed round the dais and the band broke into the national anthem. 'Broke into' was the wrong expression. They ransacked it. Stone closed his eyes and clenched his fists to stop himself laughing as the wailing brass savaged his eardrums.
  • Make It Happen To Me. London: Constable. 1969 (chapter 8)

"Terrible Hard", Says Alice (1970)

Wood, Christopher. "Terrible Hard", Says Alice. London: Constable. 1970.

• One day, thought Stone, there will be a war and when you get to the front you will last five minutes before someone puts a bullet in your back.
  • chapter 1

• "The moneylender and his wife," he said indifferently, jerking his head over his shoulder. "It is always the same in any revolution. The moneylenders are always the first to go."
  • chapter 6

• Every day, thought Stone, is a revelation. At night it seems that you will never see it again, that it has been lost in the darkness. But with the sun, you hold your breath and look, and there it is. Just as it was; as you could never quite remember it.
  • chapter 8

• I'd like to impregnate her with a warm smile, listen to my children call her "mummy", be a comfort to her in her old age.
  • chapter 9

• Everyone was mad only some of them didn't know it.
  • chapter 11

• "The trouble is, Richard, that you always think you can alter people. You say, Oh, yes, he's a little weak and I can't stand the way he hums to himself when he's shaving but when we live together I'll change that, we'll grow together, but you never do. All that happens is that the little things are symptomatic of bigger things and they become more and more important."
  • chapter 13

• I really am interested but I find it hard to make the proper helpful noises. I'm terrible inadequate when it comes to sympathy. I feel things but I can't express them in words.
  • chapter 13