Top 140 Karl Wiggins Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “The black sheep? You and I are more like the tie-dyed sheep!”

— Karl Wiggins

52. “I think there’s something about certain people’s chosen ‘lifestyle’ which ages them. I can’t explain it any other way. Leaving school, building a career, getting old before their time as they take on more stress lacks that one essential element that we had oodles of as youngsters, and that’s fun. We had lively, buoyant and animated fun. We were carefree at an age when you’re supposed to be carefree. We were breezy, jaunty and happy-go-lucky.”

— Karl Wiggins

53. “For the Gypsy, it’s moments in time that count, not interpretations or rhetorical questions or resolutions or justifications, and not even the journey’s end, for the journey never ends. Just moments in time. They are born for disappearing.”

— Karl Wiggins

54. “The problem you and I have, as Wrong Planet people, is not so much that we mean everything we say, but we expect that everyone else does to.”

— Karl Wiggins

55. “Death is a pigeon flying off with straw in its beak, romance riding its shoulder as it heads for home.”

— Karl Wiggins

56. “Strange how the perspective changes with the point of view, isn’t it? Most people who claim to believe in the Bible don’t actually know what it says.”

— Karl Wiggins

57. “If you’re a black sheep or a tie-died sheep or a Carefree Scamp – I’d rather sit around the fire with you than the ‘decent, mediocre types’ any day of the week.”

— Karl Wiggins

58. “It seems to me that although they have a respectable sales pitch, this business of a priest having the power to let bygones be bygones and grant us absolution from our scandals is all just one gigantic scam to con loads of money off a haunted and gullible public.”

— Karl Wiggins

59. “Many parts of Watford, especially around Vicarage Road Football Stadium, consist of scuzy warrens of Victorian terraced houses.”

— Karl Wiggins

60. “If someone’s been signing on for six months with still no sign of finding gainful employment, then in order to continue to receive their Unemployment Benefit or Jobseeker’s Allowance they should complete at least 30 hours of compulsory work a week with the idea being that not only do they benefit their own communities, but this would also assist them in developing basic employability skills.”

— Karl Wiggins

61. “Why can’t unemployed people clean toilets, remove graffiti from vandalised war memorials, clear wasteland or derelict areas, or even decorate public buildings such as community centres. They could work in charity shops or down the local tip, sorting people’s rubbish out. They could even look after cemeteries, cutting the grass, hedges and shrubs, keeping gravestones clean, or maybe even laying paving slabs for a new path. Or how about putting in raised flower beds in the park?”

— Karl Wiggins

62. “Wrong Planet people are charismatic and attractive enough to evoke empathy even though they often recklessly defy norms and social conventions, they can get away with being villains, often with nothing more than a cheeky smile.”

— Karl Wiggins

63. “The practice of an offbeat and sometimes bizarre lifestyle, often in the camaraderie of compatible people was incredibly romantic in the 19th century when authors, artists and entertainers lived in the low-class, substandard Gypsy ghettos of Western Europe and were often regarded as nothing more than vagabonds, globetrotters, opportunists, con artists and charlatans. They also practiced an open sexual liberation regarded at the time as quite a new morality.”

— Karl Wiggins

64. “I hold a beast, a celestial being and a maniac inside of me. It’s up to you which one you meet.”

— Karl Wiggins

65. “Life is the feel of a coral sunset over a slow-moving river. Memories of jungles and deserts and dark winds from Java. And if you really listen, you can still hear the high plains drums in New Mexico, for deep inside of you is the spirit of your past.”

— Karl Wiggins

66. “Sir Richard Francis Burton was a cross between Indiana Jones and Captain Jack Sparrow, with perhaps a little piece of the warrior-poet Aragorn from Lord of the Rings thrown in for good measure. Or maybe I should rephrase that; all these swashbuckling film heroes, including probably John Rambo, may well have been loosely based on Burton and his life.”

— Karl Wiggins

67. “The joining of humans and Djinni in marriage is still practiced in some parts of the world, and the Queen of Sheba was rumoured – by both the Jews and the Arabs – to be part Djinn.”

— Karl Wiggins

68. “And then one day we found ourselves in a cornfield. After that it seemed like the whole world was made of corn. It was just the same cornfield over and over. I got to thinking that we’d suddenly be out of it and the Manhattan skyline would pop right up on the other side. But that never happened. The corn went on forever. But eventually we hit the slave state of Missouri, with its constant panorama of rural beauty.”

— Karl Wiggins

69. “You can understand how the same word used to describe Gypsies in Western Europe came to also describe the poor artists of the Parisian slums.”

— Karl Wiggins

70. “We took 9000 fans to The Emirates to play Arsenal in the quarter-finals of the FA Cup, and we sang non-stop. But the place is a bloody library! About every twenty minutes or so their 40,000 crowd would half-heartedly sing their Ars-suh-nul song, and to encourage them we’d give them a round of applause. But even that didn’t work. Whatever we did we couldn’t give their fans the much-needed boost they evidently needed to support their own team.”

— Karl Wiggins

71. “The ability to step aside from the rest of the world has given the Gypsies a lot of survival skills to match their really dark sense of humour. The Gypsies are survivors.”

— Karl Wiggins

72. “New Agers can often be a precious breed of born-again goody-goodies. They are unbelievably delusional about their own spirituality, fully believing they’re the reincarnation of Julius Caesar or Cleopatra.”

— Karl Wiggins

73. “If a fairly substantial percentage of the money you and I work hard for is to be given to people too lazy to drag their arses out of bed at six o’clock in the morning, then we need assurance that they’re not spending our money on booze and drugs.”

— Karl Wiggins

74. “He was incorrigible, yet you can’t help but love him. His devil-may-care attitude, his brash nature and his vivaciousness aligned with his self-assertive and fearless nature gave birth to a Star who most people will, never, ever see the likes of. People like Sixteen-String Jack are wild, untameable and impossible to forget.”

— Karl Wiggins

75. “We owe shelter and welfare to people who were either born here or people who show a desire to not only integrate but become useful members of society. And certainly, nobody else.”

— Karl Wiggins

76. “Keith Moon had no off-switch and there was no way of controlling him.”

— Karl Wiggins

77. “Over the last few years I’ve felt as if I’m a walk-in, as if some kind of soul transference has taken place, as if a different soul – well, me I suppose – had just walked into my body and picked up my memories.”

— Karl Wiggins

78. “If a Shaman, sorcerer or medicine man attempts to convey insight, it’ll more than likely sound absurd to most people. Learning and culture can certainly be passed on to others, but not insight. You can discover it, allow it to exist within you, do magic through it, but you can’t teach it.”

— Karl Wiggins

79. “A real piece of writing is one in which the writer has tried to enrich not only the book, but also his understanding of the words. The words themselves have to be open to new ideas and suggestions, and the writer himself must have the audacity to attempt new things and to risk failure.”

— Karl Wiggins

80. “There’s a craziness in Wrong Planet people that means we teeter on the edge sometimes. It’s what makes us interesting.”

— Karl Wiggins

81. “To produce new works a writer will use a kind of sixth sense as well as the logical process. He’ll enjoy playing with words, and that’ll help his brain to relax and produce better ideas. His study is where he discovers order and finds hidden meanings in the words. He’ll enjoy expanding the boundaries of what is feasible, and is possibly motivated more by the writing itself than by the hard cash that is the reward for writing.”

— Karl Wiggins

82. “This was an era where you were defined by the music you listened to and the clothes you wore. You wouldn’t find a skinhead listening to King Crimson, or a Rocker listening to blue beat or reggae. It wasn’t allowed.”

— Karl Wiggins

83. “Carefree Scamps are unconventional to the extreme but they get better results, and frequently their employers, who were often in two minds about offering them the position in the first place, eventually realise they’ve found a diamond, yet not only are they unsure how to handle them, they can seldom work out how specifically they accomplish their objectives because in one way or another they’re always rocking the bloody boat. The Carefree Scamp takes quite a bit of ’managing.”

— Karl Wiggins

84. “A lot of us for instance are very good at our jobs but absolutely hopeless at job interviews.”

— Karl Wiggins

85. “Through years of experience I’ve discovered that a liar will always look into his drink when telling a lie. But he doesn’t have a drink in a cab, and even if he did I’d have no idea as to whether he were looking into it or not.”

— Karl Wiggins

86. “They reminded me, however, of soldiers in the Crusades, the Wars of the Roses or the Norman Conquest. Thick, but willing to fight anyone if told to.”

— Karl Wiggins

87. “The banking institutions, my friends, are sailing under false colours. They are running with the hare and hunting with the hounds. And we should never forget it.”

— Karl Wiggins

88. “Why should you and I struggle to pay our bills while some pisshead dopehead wanker spends OUR money on getting wrecked?”

— Karl Wiggins

89. “Rag Tags, you see, are absolutely free to do as they please, which for the most part is to imitate each other. And you only have to take a closer look at most youth culture groups to verify that. Mods and rockers, skinheads and greasers, teddy boys, suadeheads, chavs, emos, goths etc. all fear that by being different they’ll be left out in the cold. That’s why they’re Rag Tags.”

— Karl Wiggins

90. “Think of Keith Moon next time you hear of a modern-day rock star tipping his bed over in a hotel room, or you watch some of these prankster programmes on the telly. It’s all been done before.”

— Karl Wiggins

91. “There is so much zest in life! It is perpetually and enduringly luscious.”

— Karl Wiggins

92. “If by now you are thinking of me as a nutcase, it’ll somewhat redeem me from being middle-of-the-road, which after all is what we’re all about. Not being so-so. Not being fair-to-middling. Not being run-of-the-mill.”

— Karl Wiggins

93. “Have patience with the byzantine can of worms that is you. Cluttered and sloppy and chaotic, you may be, but you’re easy on the eye and you’re getting warmer.”

— Karl Wiggins

94. “I’ve come to know him well, and have discovered that shrouded behind his touchy and volatile exterior, there crouches a warm and considerate human being, crying out to be valued and loved.”

— Karl Wiggins

95. “The Warrior fights before he’s taught how. He just fights, and if you hit him he steps forwards towards you.”

— Karl Wiggins

96. “Edie Sedgwick didn’t really fit in on this planet. She didn’t fit in anywhere. She’d spent years in mental institutions, she took far too many drugs and yet she was destined to make an impression on just about everyone who ever met her, so much so that they wanted to write about her, sing about her, put her photos on album covers and, of course, film her.”

— Karl Wiggins

97. “We crossed the Mississippi and on to Illinois. At Starved Rock, 100 miles south of Chicago, we followed 40 or 50 bikers with ‘Bikers against Child Abuse’ as their colours. Next was Indiana, with foggy river towns and vast farmlands, Amish homes in Ohio with smoke curling from the chimneys, then 43 miles of unbroken forests and prime trout-water rivers in West Virginia. We stayed overnight and ate fresh game pie, although whether we were eating possum, rabbit or raccoon we never discovered.”

— Karl Wiggins

98. “It’s almost as if Bronson, Ginsberg and Bowie craved the freedom of letting go, of pushing their mind aside and allowing the vampires and demons and all the other freaks to run them so that they could slip away elsewhere.”

— Karl Wiggins

99. “Cynthia was originally from Sierra Leone, and I loved the way those two dusky words rolled off her tongue. As we drove along I found myself fascinated with the deep “Oooooohhs” and “Aaaahhhhss” that made up her conversational speech patterns.”

— Karl Wiggins

100. “It’s a huge generalisation, and possibly unfair, but there is a nasty element to certain sections of the Millwall Crowd.”

— Karl Wiggins