William Boyd > Quotes

“It's true: lives do drift apart for no obvious reason. We're all busy people,we can't spend our time simply trying to stay in touch. The test of a friendship is if it can weather these inevitable gaps.”
― William Boyd, Any Human Heart

“Maybe we should go by tube', he said.

A taxi'll come', she said. 'I'm in no hurry'.

She remembered something a woman in Paris had told her once. A woman in her forties, much married, elegant, a little world-weary. There is nothing easier in this world, this woman had claimed, than getting a man to kiss you. Oh really? Eva had said, so how do you do that? Just stand close to a man, the woman has said, very close, as close as you can without touching - he will kiss you in one minute or two. It's inevitable. For them it's like an instinct - they can't resist. Infaillible.

So Eva stood close to Romer in the doorway of the shop on Frith Street as he shooted and waved at the passing cars moving down the dark street, hoping one of them might be a taxi.

We're out of luck', he said, turning, to find Eva standing very close to him, her face lifted.

I'm in no hurry', she said.

He reached for her and kissed her.”
― William Boyd, Restless

“We never love anyone. Not really. We only love our idea of another person. It is some conception of our own that we love. We love ourselves, in fact.”
― William Boyd, Cork

“I have to start my real life soon, before I die of boredom and frustration.”
― William Boyd, Any Human Heart

“True learning only occurs when you love the subject you are studying and then the acquiring of knowledge is effortless because it is also a pleasure.”
― William Boyd, Any Human Heart

“The pleasures of my life here are simple – simple, inexpensive and democratic. A warm hill of Marmande tomatoes on a roadside vendor’s stall. A cold beer on a pavement table of the Café de France – Marie Thérèse inside making me a sandwich au camembert. Munching the knob of a fresh baguette as I wander back from Sainte-Sabine. The farinaceous smell of the white dust raised by a breeze from the driveway. A cuckoo sounding the perfectly silent woods beyond the meadow. A huge grey, cerise, pink, orange and washed-out blue of a sunset seen from my rear terrace. The drilling of the cicadas at noon – the soft dialing-tone of the crickets at dusk slowly gathers. A good book, a hammock and a cold, beaded bottle of blanc sec. A rough red wine and steak frites. The cool, dark, shuttered silence of my bedroom – and, as I go to sleep, the prospect that all this will be available to me again, unchanged, tomorrow.”
― William Boyd, Any Human Heart

“We keep a journal to entrap that collection of selves that forms us, the individual human being.”
― William Boyd, Any Human Heart

“The last thing we learn about ourselves is our effect.”
― William Boyd, Brazzaville Beach

“It terrifies me, the fragility of these moments in our lives.”
― William Boyd, Any Human Heart

“Every life is both ordinary and extraordinary - it is the respective proportion of those two categories that make that life appear interesting or humdrum.”
― William Boyd, Any Human Heart

“Those were the years when I was truly happy. Knowing that is both a blessing and a curse. It's good to acknowledge that you found true happiness in your life - in that sense your life has not been wasted. But to admit that you will never be happy like that again is hard.”
― William Boyd, Any Human Heart

“We talked filth for a pleasant half hour.”
― William Boyd, Any Human Heart

“I felt shocked and then saddened. life does this to you sometimes - leads you up a path and then drops you in the shit, to mix a metaphor.”
― William Boyd, Any Human Heart

“There are things in life we don't understand, and when we meet them, all we can do is let them alone.”
― William Boyd, Any Human Heart

“Are our lives just the aggregate of the lies we've told? ('Lives' - the 'v' is silent.)”
― William Boyd, Any Human Heart

“Why does the sea induce these feelings of transcendence in us? Is it because an unobstructed view of overarching sky meeting endlessly stirring water is as close as we can come on this earth to a visual symbol of the infinite?”
― William Boyd, Any Human Heart

“But you can be too intelligent, I said. Sometimes it's not an asset it's a curse.”
― William Boyd, Any Human Heart

“When we parted, she held on to me tight and said, "I love you, Logan. Don't let's lose touch.' I couldn't stop the tears and neither could she, so she lit a cigarette and I said it looked like rain wasn't far off, and somehow we managed to part.

As I write this I feel that draining, hollowing helplessness that genuine love for another produces in you. It's at these moments that we know that we are going to die. Only with Freya, Stella and Gail. Only three. Better than none.”
― William Boyd, Any Human Heart

“However long your stay on this small planet lasts, and whatever happens during it, the most important thing is that-from time to time-you feel life's sweet caress.”
― William Boyd, Sweet Caress: The Many Lives of Amory Clay

“Dignity was the first quality to be abandoned when the heart took over the running of human affairs.”
― William Boyd, The Blue Afternoon

“She's half mad and three parts drunk.”
― William Boyd, Waiting for Sunrise

“I experienced a form of grief so intense and pure I thought it would kill me.”
― William Boyd, Any Human Heart

“Maybe this is what life is like - we try to see clearly but what we see is never clear and is never going to be. The more we strive the murkier it becomes. All we are left with are approximations, nuances, multitudes of plausible explanations. Take your pick.”
― William Boyd, Waiting for Sunrise

“When it's mutual, a man and a woman know, instinctively, wordlessly. They may do nothing about it, but the knowledge of that shared desire is out there in the world - as obvious as neon, saying: I want you, I want you, I want you.”
― William Boyd, Any Human Heart

“You think it begins to diminish with time, the pain, then it comes back and hits you with a rawness and freshness you had forgotten.”
― William Boyd, Any Human Heart

“No human being is entirely innocent”
― William Boyd, Waiting for Sunrise

“I love to use these phrases - 'with the greatest respect', 'in all modest', 'I humbly submit' - which in fact always imply the complete opposite.”
― William Boyd, Any Human Heart

“Humankind can tolerate only so much rejection.”
― William Boyd, Any Human Heart

“I stood there in the kitchen, watching her staring across the meadow still searching for her nemesis and I thought, suddenly, that this is all our lives - this is the one fact that applies to us all, that makes us what we are, our common mortality, our common humanity. One day someone is going to come and take us away: you don't need to have been a spy, I thought, to feel like this.”
― William Boyd, Restless

“We're not ready for it - for people our age to die. We think we're safe for a while, but it's a dream. No one's safe.”
― William Boyd, Any Human Heart