Life
His father was originally from South Africa, and his mother was English; he has two younger brothers. After a childhood in poverty, he studied languages and taught himself Gregg Shorthand. Having learned Welsh, he was interviewed in Welsh on radio; he has a reasonable knowledge of ten different languages. He was apparently approached by the Home Office to work on speaker identification but turned down the offer as it was still considered unacceptable to be homosexual at the time, and he feared that the security check would make his homosexuality public.
Read more about this topic: John C. Wells
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“Make me thy Loome: thy Grace the warfe therein,
My duties Woofe, and let thy word winde Quills.
The shuttle shoot. Cut off the ends my sins.
Thy Ordinances make my fulling mills,
My Life thy Web: and cloath me all my dayes
With this Gold-web of Glory to thy praise.”
—Edward Taylor (1645–1729)
“Undershaft: Alcohol is a very necessary article. It heals the sick—Barbara: It does nothing of the sort. Undershaft: Well, it assists the doctor: that is perhaps a less questionable way of putting it. It makes life bearable to millions of people who could not endure their existence if they were quite sober. It enables Parliament to do things at eleven at night that no sane person would do at eleven in the morning.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“What is the life of man! Is it not to shift from side to side?—from sorrow to sorrow?—to button up one cause of vexation!—and unbutton another!”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)