Raymond Briggs Quotes

“So now it’s both of you! First it’s all warm, warm, warm. Then it’s all soft, soft, soft. Now it’s all nice, nice, nice!”

“If this is the stone age and mum says the ice age is coming any minute now...how long is an age?”

“I saw it rolling downhill. If I can knock the lumps of it will roll better.”

“Think! Think! Think! That boy will think himself into an early grave...”

“It’s trousers I want, Dad.”

“Time...why is it time? What is time, dad?”

“Terrific? What sort of word is that? Don’t you bring language like that into this cave!”

“I don’t like living in caves. Do neanderthal people wear stone trousers?”

“Trousers! Out of a baby mammoth? That’d be all soft and floppy. Disgusting!”

“You can’t stop animals from running away! They’re frightened. They don’t want to be killed and eaten!”

“Both of them feeling nostalgia at World War II of all things and believing this is just going to be much the same, no need to get too fussed about it. ”

The UK is struck by a devastating nuclear attack. Cities and communication systems are destroyed, roads melted, the earth and air poisoned and ravaged. All seen through the eyes of Mr and Mrs Bloggs living alone in the countryside, who are a bit peeved the milkman hasn’t came yet.

“We were in a taxi in some city, perhaps London. We’d just come out of a tunnel. Suddenly, the driver slammed on the brakes and started reversing as fast as he could. As we went back into the tunnel, I saw the mushroom cloud rising in front of us. It stretched up to the sky.”

“You somehow knew were you were then. I don’t even know who the people are these days...I expect it’s all done by committees, dear.”

“I think this one is called The Big Bang Theory. It’s all been worked out by brilliant scientists. Well, we survived the last one. It’ll take more than a few bombs to get me down.”

The 1980s, it was a decade of utterly foolish magical thinking about nuclear annihilation, an era in which governments in both the United States and the United Kingdom pretended that, with enough shovels — and a stiff upper lip — people could survive a nuclear blast.

“Don’t you dare use my best cushions from the front room! I will get some ones from upstairs. I’ll put them in plastic bag. I don’t want finger marks getting all over them.”

“Unfortunately the evil is out of the bag and there is no going back for mankind. Jim and Hilda are a stark reminder to us all of a bleak and stark future which is out of our hands. It portrays how helpless we are and how reliant we are of the powers that be to keep us safe.”

“It’s funny to think there’s no shelters this time. We had an old Anderson in the garden. I can see it now... We had nasturtiums growing all over it... and we painted the front green... it looked quite pretty... next door grew cabbages on theirs...”

“These two morons really have no idea what’s coming to them, just living their daily lives almost as normal, talking about politics without truly understanding, old James trying to prepare for the nuke the best he can and talking about whatever’s ‘the correct thing”.