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Author: Stephen Clarke
Quotes of Author: Stephen Clarke
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  1. Stephen Clarke _ 1000 Years of Annoying the

    Anglo-Saxon and Franco-Norman came into closer contact, and the linguistic survival techniques on both sides led to the emergence of a supple, adaptable language in which you could invent or half-borrow words and didn't have to worry so much about whether your sentences had the right verb endings or respected certain strict rules of word order and style {as this sentence proves}. The result was the earliest form of what would become English.
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  2. Stephen Clarke _ 1000 Years of Annoying the

    Tanacharison {who could relate to the cow because he claimed that the French had boiled and eaten his father},
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  3. Stephen Clarke _ 1000 Years of Annoying the

    His posturing for independence came to its logical climax when in 1966 he ordered all foreign troops out of France, arguing that in the event of war, he would not let French soldiers bow to American command as they had been forced to do in World War Two. The way de Gaulle announced his new policy has gone down in history. Apparently the Général phoned the American President, Lyndon Johnson, to tell him that France was opting out of NATO, and that consequently all American military personnel had to be removed from French soil. Taking part in the conference call was Dean Rusk, the US Secretary of State, and Johnson told Rusk to reply: 'Does that include those buried in it?
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  4. Stephen Clarke _ 1000 Years of Annoying the

    Philippe also brought along musicians - mainly trumpeters and drummers - to scare the enemy. Even then, French music was known to terrify the English.
    book-quotehumourphilippe-vi

  5. Stephen Clarke _ 1000 Years of Annoying the

    James II's second wife, an Italian Catholic princess called Mary {at the time, there was an edict whereby all female royals were to be called Mary to confuse future readers of history books},
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  6. Stephen Clarke _ 1000 Years of Annoying the

    This is probably the most annoying thing of all to the French. Not only do we pronounce the battles incorrectly {Crécy should be 'Cray-see' and Waterloo 'Watt-air-loh'}, with Agincourt {'Ah-zan-coor'} we even get the spelling wrong.
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  7. Stephen Clarke _ 1000 Years of Annoying the

    it must have been hard making a silent movie about a girl who hears voices.}
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  8. Stephen Clarke _ 1000 Years of Annoying the

    When a Quebecker is interviewed for French TV, he or she is often subtitled in 'normal' French, as if the language they speak in francophone Canada is so barbarous that Parisians won't be able to understand
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  9. Stephen Clarke _ A Year in the Merde

    There's no room for human rights in a government waiting room.
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  10. Stephen Clarke _ 1000 Years of Annoying the

    there is a French version of the story, and a true one.
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  11. Stephen Clarke _ A Year in the Merde

    I was also sick of my neighbors, as most Parisians are. I now knew every second of the morning routine of the family upstairs. At 7:00 am alarm goes off, boom, Madame gets out of bed, puts on her deep-sea divers' boots, and stomps across my ceiling to megaphone the kids awake. The kids drop bags of cannonballs onto the floor, then, apparently dragging several sledgehammers each, stampede into the kitchen. They grab their chunks of baguette and go and sit in front of the TV, which is always showing a cartoon about people who do nothing but scream at each other and explode. Every minute, one of the kids cartwheels {while bouncing cannonballs} back into the kitchen for seconds, then returns {bringing with it a family of excitable kangaroos} to the TV. Meanwhile the toilet is flushed, on average, fifty times per drop of urine expelled. Finally, there is a ten-minute period of intensive yelling, and at 8:15 on the dot they all howl and crash their way out of the apartment to school." {p.137}
    book-quotefamilykidsneighbors

  12. Stephen Clarke _ A Year in the Merde

    If they wanted their shit stirred, then stirred their shit was jolly well going to be.
    book-quotefunny
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