Colin Wilson

The average man is a conformist, accepting miseries and disasters with the stoicism of a cow standing in the rain.

Whereas in the past optimism had been regarded as rather shallow - because 'oh well, it's just your temperament, you happen to be just a cheerful sort of person' - what I wanted to do was to establish that in fact it is the pessimists who are allowing all kinds of errors to creep into their work.

If you asked me what is the basis of all my work, it's the feeling there's something basically wrong with human beings.

Criminals interest me, because they're driven by the same desires as we are, but they take these disastrous shortcuts and end up in a real mess.

A symphony is a stage play with the parts written for instruments instead of for actors.

What I wanted to do was to try to create a philosophy upon a completely new foundation.

The mind has exactly the same power as the hands; not merely to grasp the world, but to change it.

When I was a teenager I was a total romantic escapist. My world was books.

The complex develops out of the simple.

Being very famous is not the fun it sounds. It merely means you're being chased by a lot of people and you lose your privacy.

If I'd stayed on in London and carried on going to literary parties, it would have wrecked me as a writer.

I've always been a pretty hard worker. That's how I've written over a hundred books.

I'm basically a writer of ideas, and the English aren't interested in ideas. The English, I'm afraid, are totally brainless.