Top 140 Karl Wiggins Quotes (2026 Update)
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101. “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

102. “I’ve sat in restaurants and viewed the food on the plate as I would a half-blooded mongrel. I may feel sorry for it and given time even get to like it a little, but it’s never going to really gain my affections. The plate in front of you should tantalize, seduce and enchant you. It should be a cheeky devil, a minx, a hussy even, but never a desperado.”

— Karl Wiggins

103. “As they call last orders, he’ll walk over to a girl he’s no doubt slept with before, pour half his pint over his own head and the remainder over hers, and with a twinkle in his eye say, “Looks like you’ve pulled again, doesn’t it?”

— Karl Wiggins

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

— Karl Wiggins

105. “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

106. “For the most part policy-makers are too nervous about offending people, yet when BRITAIN really was GREAT that was the last thought on our minds.”

— Karl Wiggins

107. “Whilst the food we eat nowadays has much to be grateful to the likes of Marco Polo, Alexander the Great and Vasco De Gama, who would have introduced the tangy flavours of South Africa’s Rainbow Cuisine on his way around the Cape of Good Hope to India, Arabic cuisine, with spices of cinnamon, cloves, saffron and ginger was a lot more enterprising than Western cooking at the time. The medley of colours that the spices offered the food had mystical meanings to the Arabs.”

— Karl Wiggins

108. “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

109. “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

110. “She didn’t belong on this planet, yet she somehow touched everyone who came into contact with her.”

— Karl Wiggins

111. “There are hundreds of thousands of musicians, artists, painters, poets, writers and bricklayers, and we certainly need walls, music and art, but I truly believe that what some of them do comes from a higher source.”

— Karl Wiggins

112. “Arsenal play pretty-boy football. Good to watch on the telly, but there’s no real grit in their play.”

— Karl Wiggins

113. “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

114. “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

115. “There is nothing more annoying than somebody who is really thick but who believes with absolute conviction that he is more intelligent than you.”

— Karl Wiggins

116. “Americans tend to think that korma is the curry of choice for the Caucasian, and it is if you’re a white guy with no balls.”

— Karl Wiggins

117. “Magic can be so draining.”

— Karl Wiggins

118. “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

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

— Karl Wiggins

120. “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

121. “If you’re fit and healthy and capable of mending a fence or stacking shelves, and you’re not doing either of those things, then I say you don’t get the right to vote. I don’t want someone who’s too lazy to get a job making decisions on how this country should be run.”

— Karl Wiggins

122. “On June 23rd 2016 we took the opportunity to abandon this sinking ship captained by failed politicians and unelected crooks. But we’ll still trade, we’ll still holiday abroad and America will still ask us to stand Shoulder-to-Shoulder with them in ‘their’ fight against terrorism.”

— Karl Wiggins

123. “Janice Joplin was uninhibited and raw, a combination which when blended with her stormy and tempestuous lifestyle was irresistible.”

— Karl Wiggins

124. “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

125. “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

126. “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

127. “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

128. “People invariably ask Carefree Scamps, “Where did you get that jumper?” or, “Where did you get that dress?” The answer is quite possibly Camden Market, but they won’t be able to remember. They’ll simply answer something like, “I dunno, I’ve had it for ages.”

— Karl Wiggins

129. “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

130. “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

131. “You feel as if your Earthwalk is a mission of some sorts, but you can’t quite remember what that mission is, and whatever it is you don’t seem to be accomplishing it. In other words, you’re a little bit disheartened. And maybe a little touched.”

— Karl Wiggins

132. “I know for a fact that if a country took me in and offered me assistance, I would be on my best behaviour forever! I would show total respect to the people of that nation and their laws. And I certainly wouldn’t expect special treatment.”

— Karl Wiggins

133. “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

134. “Go searching for your own tribe! And at no time conceal or camouflage your true self. You never know who may be out there watching and trying to spot exactly who you are.”

— Karl Wiggins

135. “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

136. “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

137. “The incandescent, phosphorescent truth is that whatever you’re facing – bankruptcy, unemployment, loss of a spouse – isn’t going to kill you.”

— Karl Wiggins

138. “The Warrior-Sage will get focused, turn the power on and concentrate on the job at hand. And by doing this he is an effective role model for others around him. One way or another, he will get the job done. And if he finds himself in a situation that he is unable to change he will simply shrug his shoulders, go inside himself and wait it out.”

— Karl Wiggins

139. “I write in my head on the way home from work, or when mowing the lawn, or on a night out with friends. Sometimes I find the time to capture those words that are rolling through my mind, quivering and drumming and swimming, banging into each other until I can finally trick them and leak them out onto the page. And sometimes I don’t. Writers are like that.”

— Karl Wiggins

140. “When I was young I lived in several different countries, and we HAD to find work because there were no welfare state options open to us in those countries. And do you know what? We went out and found work. We had no choice.”

— Karl Wiggins

141. “Have you seen the state of some of these vegetarians? They look like they’re going to drop down dead any minute. We didn’t fight our way to the top of the food chain to be vegetarians, did we? Can you imagine a fry-up without the sausage and bacon? Or not being able to order steak, egg and chips? Can you imagine Christmas dinner without the turkey? Or a barbeque without the ribs?”

— Karl Wiggins

142. “Every one of the big breakthroughs in the art of literature have possibly started as what many would call a ludicrous or even laughable idea as the writer occasionally balances a routine piece with an investment in the eccentric and untried. Over time, the reward is usually worth the risk.”

— Karl Wiggins