A Quote by Emma Tennant

Quite a lot of people wanted me to write about my family, I suppose for fairly obvious reasons, and there was always something that would stop me, I thought they were asking me for the wrong motives.
I always wanted praise, and I always wanted attention; I won't lie to you. I was a jazz critic, and that wasn't good enough for me. I wanted people to write about me, not me about them. So I thought, 'What could I do? I can't sing, I can't dance, I can't act or anything like that. OK, I can write.'
I always wanted praise and I always wanted attention; I won't lie to you. I was a jazz critic and that wasn't good enough for me. I wanted people to write about me, not me about them. So I thought, What could I do? I can't sing, I can't dance, I can't act or anything like that. OK, I can write.
So many people around me would say they cared for the wrong reasons. A lot of people were pulling from me, taking from me and not giving.
I've done everything for the wrong reasons. All the good works people credit to me are nothing because I did them expecting God to repay me. I thought if I worked hard enough, God would have to give me what I wanted. The truth is I've never served the Lord at all. I was always serving myself.
A lot of people have been quite surprised with the stuff that I'm doing on my own, which shocks me because I've always known what I wanted to do. But people have only seen me with the Spice Girls, so I suppose it's not that surprising.
Pardon me, not to sound elitist, but I wanted to put something together that I would enjoy. I thought at that time, what satiated me, what interested me, what intrigued me, I thought other people would like also. And you blend that with some forward thinking of predicting the UFC and MMA were going to be ultimately as big as it became.
I can do what I want to do, lucky me. But when these people are coming at me and asking these things, they don't really care about me. And I have felt like there were all these people who just wanted to use me.
I would suppose I learned how to write when I was very young indeed. When I read a child's book about the Trojan War and decided that the Greeks were really a bunch of frauds with their tricky horses and the terrible things they did, stealing one another's wives, and so on, so at that very early age, I re-wrote the ending of the Iliad so that the Trojans won. And boy, Achilles and Ajax got what they wanted, believe me. And thereafter, at frequent intervals, I would write something. It was really quite extraordinary. Never of very high merit, but the daringness of it was.
When people told me that I couldn't do something, I wanted to always prove them wrong. That comes a lot from people always bullying me because of my size and not thinking that I could do anything to impact the world or inspire other people.
It wasn't about how she looked, which was pretty, even though she was always wearing the wrong clothes and those beat-up sneakers. It wasn't about what she said in class--usually something no one else would've thought of, and if they had, something they wouldn't have dared to say. It wasn't that she was different from all the other girls at Jackson. That was obvious. It was that she made me realize how much I was just like the rest of them, even if I wanted to pretend I wasn't.
You know, my company is my company. My dad didn't help me, and I didn't get money from my family. I have the most supportive family and they would give me anything, but I always thought that I wanted to do something on my own and prove myself on my own for sure.
I walked out of the show business in 1968 because I thought that would be good for the family. It took me some time to decide but I wanted to spend more time with my wife and two daughters who were always beside me. I wanted to do everything I could for them.
So many people had been asking me to write an autobiography, or threatening to write my biography without any input from me, that I thought I'd better tell my story before other people told it for me.
People keep asking me if the Boosh is coming back, and I say, 'I hope so.' I'm not bothered people ask me about it. TV's become quite disposable, so to make something that lasts a bit of time - it won't last forever - is quite nice.
My dad dying was actually a reason for me to stop music properly for about a year, because he was a big supporter. All I wanted to do was write a song about him and, you know, when something's too fresh, you can't quite word it.
People were getting sick. It seemed, at least to me when I started looking at the information, looking at the documents, that this was pretty obvious, what was going on, and if other people could see what we were seeing, they would agree: this is obvious and it needs to stop.
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