Patrick White Quotes

I expect we are all jealous of the women in their past, but how much less exciting if the women had not kept the bed warm.

If truth is not acceptable, it becomes the imagination of others.

I developed the habit of writing novels behind a closed door, or at my uncle's, on the dining table.

In fact I enjoyed every minute of my life at King's, especially the discovery of French and German literature.

Poetry resists academic pretension, just as the mystery of religious faith evaporates on contact with dogma.

His legend will be written down, eventually, by those who are troubled by it.

Mrs. Trotter made a sincere though wrong sound, while opening her handbag to look for help.

Because he had nothing to hide, he did perhaps appear to have forfeited a little of his strength. But that is the irony of honesty.

Life doesn't end on the kitchen floor while there is the will to dance.

I am compelled into this country.

The map? I will first make it.

My father and mother were second cousins, though they did not meet till shortly before their marriage.

I continued writing the bad plays which fortunately nobody would produce, just as no one did me the unkindness of publishing my early novels.

Such was the texture of her marble.
[In a description of Laura Trevelyan.]

In general,' Voss replied, 'it is necessary to communicate without knowledge of the language.

Reason finally holds a gun at its head - and does not always miss.

To understand the stars would spoil their appearance.

Life is full of alternatives but no choice.

If I have not lost my mind I can sometimes hear it preparing to defect

To make yourself, it is also necessary to destroy yourself.

Human relationships are vast as deserts: they demand all daring, she seemed to suggest.

So that, in the end, there was no end.

The mystery of life is not salved by success, which is an end in itself, but in failure, in perpetual struggle, in becoming.

Human behavior is a series of lunges, of which, it is sometimes sensed, the direction is inevitable.

There are moments when the eyes flow into each other. Then the souls are wrapped around each other across a distance

To kiss and to kill are similar words to eyes that focus with difficulty.

At times his arrogance did resolve itself into simplicity, though it was difficult, especially for strangers, to distinguish these occasions.

No animal suffers worse than a human being.

There's nothing so inhuman as a human being.