Top 66 Birmingham Quotes

At ten I was playing against 18-year-old guys. At 15 I was playing professional ball with the Birmingham Black Barons, so I really came very quickly in all sports.

Manchester’s history is cotton and wool. Birmingham’s is iron and steel.

In Birmingham, Manchester or Liverpool there are white gangs that share the same backgrounds – they come from broken homes, completely dysfunctional, mums for the most part unable to cope, the fathers of these kids completely not in the scene.

Part of the reason for doing ‘Peaky Blinders,’ apart from the fact that it was a personal story and I’ve always wanted to do it, was what was great I felt is that Birmingham is probably the least fashionable city in Britain.

It’s not like, I don’t know, if Madonna has a new record out, then everybody from Bangkok to Birmingham knows what its called and can buy it the same week. But our stuff is not in that mass market.

The thing about Birmingham is, no one spends their evening looking over your shoulder thinking: ‘Is that Nick Grimshaw?’ and wondering if there’s a better night they could be on. Because there isn’t.

I grew up in a small holding in Staffordshire near Tamworth, and we had a few ponies and chickens, ducks and dogs and my mum used to do horse-riding lessons, but we moved to Birmingham when I was 13.

It was illegal for black people and white people to play checkers together in Birmingham. And there were even black and white Bibles to swear to tell the truth on in many parts of the South.

When I first began visiting West Germany in the early 1980s, I was startled by the contrast between Birmingham, where I went to school, and affluent Cologne. My host family, the lovely Schumachers, always had an opulent array of grapes on the table; they were better dressed than anyone I knew in Britain.

I went to university in the north of England at University of Birmingham to do an English literature degree, and I knew I could do extracurricular stuff with theater and drama. I started a theater company, called Article 19, and I did it with a bunch of friends. I wrote and directed plays. I had a radio show.

I told Birmingham I don’t want nothing, I’m not interested in the money.

By the time I sold Birmingham City football club in 2009, 75% of the directors were women, which I take great pride in – that’s unique in business, full stop.

I feel unbelievably blessed that I have had the opportunity to photograph Malala in her classroom in Birmingham.

I remember the ’70s constantly being winter in Manchester and the Irish community in Manchester closing ranks because of the IRA bombings in Birmingham and Manchester, and you know the bin-workers’ strike, all wrapped up in it… They were violent times. Violence at home and violence at football matches.

I grew up in Solihull, on the edge of what was then the Birmingham conurbation. It was a good place to write comedy from. I didn’t feel allegiance to anything. I didn’t have working-class pride or upper-class superiority.

Pebble Mill was packed with a lot of talent and a lot of really, really good stuff came out of Birmingham. It was a tragedy that it closed. It was the most famous TV centre in the country.

I think the city isn’t talked about enough, there are not enough people championing Birmingham. When I was at university in Manchester I wasn’t a fan, I was a bit down on my home city. But as I’ve got older I love living here. It’s easy to get around the country to gigs, and it’s a calming, friendly city.

I remember I played Birmingham and I’d been awake for about a week and I was walking about like a raving lunatic.

I grew up in Birmingham, Ala. Nobody really blow up from Birmingham, Ala.

Nobody black had learned anything from the ‘Letter from the Birmingham Jail’ or from the ‘I Have a Dream’ speech. That was a revelation of white people.

After graduating high school, Betty attended the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute in Birmingham, Alabama, the alma mater of both her parents. My mother relocated to New York because she refused to accept the oppressive racism of the Jim Crow south.

I came close to joining Villa early on in my career but nothing happened. I met with them and also with people from Birmingham but nothing materialised.

Touring has been a major part of my career. I’ve done a lot of huge shows, including a 13-night sell-out stint at the Indoor Arena in Birmingham, playing to a total audience of 65,000.

Normally during the week between Christmas and New Year I’m slumped in a chair in Birmingham, eating, farting and spouting total nonsense.

I would be writing an essay that was due in the next day until about 1 A.M., and then I would be up at 6 A.M. and on a train to Birmingham to record ‘The Archers’. It was pretty intense.

My father was a plumber and I’m from the northeastern part of Pennsylvania, and I promise you, I’ve been to Birmingham and Montgomery and when the plane lands, it’s really reminiscent, topography wise, to northeastern Pennsylvania and I feel that same vibe.

I am who I am. I’m from Birmingham. My mum works at Sainsbury’s. My dad is a fire-fighter. We keep it real. We know who we are. I haven’t made a lot of money, but I’m equally comfortable. I have food, clothes on my back, and my family.

The saddest face I ever saw on Martin Luther King was at the funeral of the four little girls slain in Birmingham, Alabama.

When you’ve got African parents, you go to uni, do finance, and go into accounting. But I’m not good with systems. I dropped out in my final year of college to become a Christian poet. Then went back to do my A-levels and went to uni in Birmingham to do political science and theology. I lasted 12 weeks.

I’m in the process of brainstorming with my marketing team and all that stuff, trying to come up with a concept for a late-night restaurant for people in Birmingham.

You can’t be born in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1955 and grow up in South Central near the Black Panthers headquarters and not feel like you’ve got some kind of social responsibility.

Birmingham people are the salt of the earth, and I’ve carried that with me all around the world. People respond to a certain down-to-earthness that I have, and that’s purely as a result of coming from Birmingham.

In 2011, I started a nonprofit organization, Venture for America, to help bring talented young entrepreneurs to create thousands of jobs in Detroit, Cleveland, St. Louis, Birmingham, Baltimore and other cities around the country.

I left Birmingham for Wigan because I was impressed with what Paul Jewell was doing, but I ended up back with the gaffer at Villa.

In my third year at medical school in Birmingham, I joined the Air Force as a medical cadet so that I was sponsored to become a doctor.

It is a bit surreal for me because I have been a lifelong Birmingham fan, so to be inducted into the Hall of Fame is a massive honour.

Birmingham has managed to keep that warmth, and it has the friendliest people. I can’t see why I would want to leave.

I started in the kitchen of a Holiday Inn in Birmingham. I wanted to be a sponge, wanted to learn and progress. I knew I didn’t want to work in a hotel forever, but I had some good teachers there.

After an extensive interview he arranged for my weaknesses in foreign languages to be over-looked and so I started a Biology degree at Birmingham in 1967.

I’m a city boy. I grew up in a big city, in Birmingham, and I want to write about a city. It’s much richer tapestry for me than green fields. Fields and wild life make me feel ill. I don’t like – I don’t want to write about that stuff.

As a young singer, you have to get experience somehow, to try things out and grow as a singer. They way you do that is by going through the ranks and singing at companies like Opera Birmingham. It’s a perfect place to foster a career.

When I was in Birmingham I used to go to a place called Redwood Field. I used to get there for a two o’clock game. Where can you make this kind of money playing sports? It was just a pleasure to go out and enjoy myself and get paid for it.

With the national team I had to go to Newcastle, Wales, I knew a little about England, but Wolves and Birmingham I did not know anything.

Mine is, after all, the generation that had come to maturity drinking in the forebodings of the Silones, Koestlers, and Richard Wrights. It had left us ill-prepared for decisions that had to be made in our own time about Algeria, Birmingham, or the Bay of Pigs.

My wife goes to Birmingham five times a week. My mom lives in Birmingham now after moving from Myrtle Beach. It’s not just the job. A lot of people don’t get that. My life is here.

People have been saying life will change for us now but me? No chance. I may be a World Cup winner but I will always be the lad who played cricket with his friends and cousins in the park on Stoney Lane in south Birmingham using an old milk crate for stumps.

My mother was a leading lady in a local theatre in Birmingham, Alabama, where I grew up.

The problems of the world are not going to be engaged with and solved in Faversham, they’re going to be sorted out in cities like Birmingham.

It’s really important to me that ‘Peaky Blinders’ went down so well in Birmingham. Apparently the audience share in the West Midlands was double that of any other region.