William Boyd quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by William Boyd

William Boyd Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from William Boyd on Wise Famous Quotes.

I have teken refuge in the doctrine that advises one not to seek tranquility in certainty but in permanently suspended judgement.

I stopped and filled my lungs, smelling Africa - smelling dust, woodsmoke, a perfume from a flower, something musty, something decaying.

I feel very sorry for myself - that is what grief is.

I've never met a vegetarian that I liked, curiously. You might have been the exception, of course"

Solo

Feelings of depression; feelings of frustration; feelings of emptiness in the face of all this randomness - done down by the haphazard, yet again.

There is a disconnect between the film Bond and the literary Bond which is their contemporaneity. I don't suffer from that.

Because it seems to me that to be human you have to be able to compromise.

I have this lock of hair that keeps falling across my forehead. It drives me mad.

She bought a pint of whiskey and woke to discover that she had managed to construct a presentable hangover for herself on the morning of 1 January.

To live as an artist requires hard work or some extraordinary good fortune to come your way.

We keep a journal to entrap that collection of selves that forms us, the individual human being.

There are things in life we don't understand, and when we meet them, all we can do is let them alone.

I have to start my real life soon, before I die of boredom and frustration.

Gabriel thought maps should be banned. They gave the world an order and reasonableness which it did not possess.
'An Ice-cream War

In some ways, you could argue, television is doing far more interesting work than the movies. It's more fulfilling.

The wounded, the incomplete, the unbalanced, the malfunctioning, the ill seek each other out: like attracted to like.

I should learn to be more craftily evasive, I thought: a bad evasion is tantamount to telling the truth.

No human being is entirely innocent

Dignity was the first quality to be abandoned when the heart took over the running of human affairs.

Here at its extremities the terrified transients gathered, gazing out at the vast refulgent ocean for some sign of security. We

My novels are often about people who are in love or attracted to each other.

I tend to admire dead people more than the living. All too often, human reality diminishes the glowing reputation.

The last thing we learn about ourselves is our effect.

All the itch and clutter of the world, its bother and fuss, its nagging pettiness, can wear you down so easily. And this is why I like the beach ...

Curious how these early linguistic abilities are so fragile, how unthinkingly and easily the brain lets them go.

She's half mad and three parts drunk.

I felt truly happy for the first time in years. Such moments should be logged and noted.

Describe your state of mine. Insecure. Uncertain. Feverish

Real life is never, never as simple as a movie.

Hot crumpets with butter and jam - what could be more ambrosial?

what is it about me and basements? Why do I like the semi-subterranean life?

Human beings are interested in the human condition.

Humankind can tolerate only so much rejection.

and thin, with the slight stoop

In the broad spectrum of the arts, two worlds rarely overlap - the literary world and the world of rock music.

What can I know? Nothing for sure. What ought I to do? Try not to hurt anyone. What may I hope for? For the best (but it won't make any difference).

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.

It terrifies me, the fragility of these moments in our lives.

I love to use these phrases - 'with the greatest respect', 'in all modest', 'I humbly submit' - which in fact always imply the complete opposite.

I don't think they'll ever make a retro Bond.

All great artists are doubters.

I would catch them fast, eternally, thanks to the properties of my wonderful machine. In my hands I had the power to stop time,or so I fancied.

In my mind Greece is reduced to one vast pile of shattered marble, shimmering in a heat aze.

Are our lives just the aggregate of the lies we've told? ('Lives' - the 'v' is silent.)

Happenstance intersecting with received wisdom produces something entirely new and significant

Old Testament prophets. 'You savvy dis fetish thing?

he needed the security of other bodies.

When I think of my youth, he went in, what we took for granted, what we assumed was for ever certain, for ever permanent.

but you're giving a very good impression of a lovelorn fool pining for his girl.

We talked filth for a pleasant half hour.

I let people off the hook too easily.

We all possess, like it or not, the people we know, and are possessed by them in turn.

I have always thought if you are going to make a film, it's much better to have an original script that will play to film's strengths.

Sometimes limbo is a tolerable place to be stuck.

People lead their real, most interesting lives under cover of secrecy

The last thing you know about yourself is your effect.

I experienced a form of grief so intense and pure I thought it would kill me.

There was something facile and shallow about male beauty, she thought.

Any fool can "obey" an order,' Hamo said, darkly. 'The clever thing is to interpret it.

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.

The best often seem the worst

But you can be too intelligent, I said. Sometimes it's not an asset it's a curse.

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.

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.

There's a sense in all my novels that nothing is certain.