William Boyd Quotes

Quotes about:

• 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

  Ideas, Facts, Persons

  William Boyd (2013). “The Dream Lover: Short Stories”, p.335, A&C Black

  47 Copy quote

• 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

  Weather, People, True Life

  William Boyd (2003). “Any human heart: a novel”, Alfred a Knopf Inc

  30 Copy quote

• The last thing you know about yourself is your effect.

  William Boyd

  Lasts, About Yourself, Effects

  7 Copy quote

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

  William Boyd

  Real, Frustration, Boredom

  William Boyd (2003). “Any human heart: a novel”, Alfred a Knopf Inc

  7 Copy quote

• The last thing we ever learn about ourselves is our effect.

  William Boyd

  Lasts, Effects

  "Brazzaville Beach".

  5 Copy quote

• When you experience bereavement at a youngish age, you suddenly realise that life is unjust and unfair, that bad things will happen, and you have to take that on board.

  William Boyd

  Bereavement, Age, Boards

  5 Copy quote

• I let people off the hook too easily.

  William Boyd

  People, Hook

  5 Copy quote

• 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

  Men, Desire, World

  William Boyd (2002). “Any human heart”

  10 Copy quote

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

  William Boyd

  Judgement, Doctrine, Tranquility

  William Boyd, John Costello (1991). “Ten days to destiny: the secret story of the Hess peace initiative and British efforts to strike a deal with Hitler”, William Morrow & Co

  7 Copy quote

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

  William Boyd

  Hard Work, Artist, Way

  5 Copy quote

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

  William Boyd

  Certain, Novel

  "A life in writing". Interview with Christopher Tayler, www.theguardian.com. September 11, 2009.

  5 Copy quote

• Writing a film - more precisely, adapting a book into a film - is basically a relentless series of compromises. The skill, the "art," is to make those compromises both artistically valid and essentially your own. . . . It has been said before but is worth reiterating: writing a novel is like swimming in the sea; writing a film is like swimming in the bath.

  William Boyd

  Art, Book, Writing

  7 Copy quote

• It's amazing how sudden the effect is - it must be the result of a deep atavistic mating urge buried inside us. A glance and you think: 'Yes, this is the one, this one is right for me.' Every instinct in your body seems to sing in unison.

  William Boyd

  Thinking, Body, Instinct

  William Boyd (2003). “Any human heart: a novel”, Alfred a Knopf Inc

  6 Copy quote

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

  William Boyd

  Running, Heart, Quality

  William Boyd (2013). “The Blue Afternoon”, p.114, Penguin UK

  16 Copy quote

• Film is a medium of clear lines and broad strikes - which can be fantastic - but compared to the subtleties and nuances of a novel, it doesn't even get close.

  William Boyd

  Lines, Nuance, Film

  6 Copy quote

• Is that a good definition of marking the ageing watershed? That moment when you realize - quite rationally, quite unemotionally - that the world in the not-so-distant future will not contain you: that the trees you planted will continue growing but you will not be there to see them.

  William Boyd

  Tree, World, Growing

  5 Copy quote

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

  William Boyd

  Suffering, Film

  5 Copy quote

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

  William Boyd

  Self, Individual, Form

  William Boyd (2003). “Any human heart: a novel”, Alfred a Knopf Inc

  7 Copy quote

• With film, you have very limited tools to convey subjectivity - voiceover, the camera's point of view, good acting - but even the very best actor in the world is crude by comparison with what you can do in a written paragraph.

  William Boyd

  Views, Acting, Cameras

  8 Copy quote

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

  William Boyd

  Things In Life, Can Do

  William Boyd (2003). “Any human heart: a novel”, Alfred a Knopf Inc

  7 Copy quote

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

  William Boyd

  People, Novel

  5 Copy quote

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

  William Boyd

  Interesting, Television, Way

  5 Copy quote

• 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

  Common Humanity, Kitchen, Spy

  William Boyd (2009). “Restless”, p.278, A&C Black

  6 Copy quote

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

  William Boyd

  People, Turns, Knows

  William Boyd (2013). “The Dream Lover: Short Stories”, p.309, A&C Black

  4 Copy quote

• Do we change every time we have a new encounter? Are we endlessly mutable? I think these are fascinating questions: it's a rich vein to tap, and I don't think I have exhausted it fully yet.

  William Boyd

  Thinking, Encounters, Veins

  4 Copy quote

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