George Mikes How To Be An Alien Quotes

An Englishman, even if he is alone, forms an orderly queue of one.

Q. Why don't the British panic? A. They do, but very quietly. It is impossible for the naked eye to tell their panic from their ecstasy.

Remember: If you go for a walk with a friend in England, don't say a single word for hours; if you go for a walk with your dog, talk to it all the time.

When I am alone in the forest at night-time and jump from one tree to another, I often think that life is so strange.

While the Rumanian Radio was serializing (without my permission) How to be an Alien as an anti-British tract, the Central Office of Information rang me up here in London and asked me to allow the book to be translated into Polish for the benefit of those many Polish refugees who were then settling in this country. ‘We want our friends to see us in this light,’ the man said on the telephone. This was hard to bear for my militant and defiant spirit. ‘But it’s not such a favourable light,’ I protested feebly. ‘It’s a very human light and that is the most favourable,’ retorted the official. I was crushed. A few weeks later my drooping spirit was revived when I heard of a suburban bank manager whose wife had brought this book home to him remarking that she had found it fairly amusing. The gentleman in question sat down in front of his open fire, put his feet up and read the book right through with a continually darkening face. When he had finished, he stood up and said: ‘Downright impertinence.’ And threw the book into the fire. He was a noble and patriotic spirit and he did me a great deal of good. I wished there had been more like him in England. But I could never find another.