Words matter. These are the best Toby Young Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
You know when you tell a self-deprecating story at a dinner party, everyone’s laughing along with you? But then when someone else repeats that same story at another dinner party you feel they’re all laughing at you?
I tried being a mechanic and I tried catering, but I realized I had even less aptitude for semi-skilled labour than for academic work.
People in London think of London as the center of the world, whereas New Yorkers think the world ends three miles outside of Manhattan.
I think I’ve been wishing for celebrity for so long that I’ve got used to being someone who’s petitioning the establishment for acceptance… my whole schtick, my whole identity, is so wrapped up in being a petitioner that I don’t really know how to react now that petition has been granted.
I expect that in 40 years’ time I’ll be writing political tomes and working for an organisation like Oxfam.
‘Top Chef’ is a very smooth-running machine. All the people working there are incredibly professional and absolutely at the top of their game.
I wouldn’t describe myself as a master of anything.
In Britain, by contrast, we still think that class plays a part in determining a person’s life chances, so we’re less inclined to celebrate success and less inclined to condemn failure. The upshot is that it’s much easier to be a failure in Britain than it is in America.
There’s no reason why you can’t deliver a grammar-school curriculum to an all-ability intake.
My life’s ambition is to play a James Bond villain. I have the cat and the eye-patch, so I’m just waiting for the call. For some reason, though, the phone hasn’t rung.
America thinks of itself as a meritocracy, so people have more respect for success and more contempt for failure.
I miss being fawned over by restaurateurs and chefs.
I was once hired to write a column for ‘The Guardian’ and then got fired before I’d submitted my first one. That was unusual. Most newspapers wait until I’ve written at least one piece for them before firing me.
I really like the Observer. I think I’d love to have a column with a broad reach that would enable me to do some proper reporting, but keep it on sort of a humorous level. I’ve always had a very happy experience writing for them.
The fact that I’m a Tory who hasn’t worked at a university – at least, not since I taught at Cambridge in 1990 – doesn’t disqualify me from serving on the board of the OfS.
