Lawrence Durrell Quotes - Page 4

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• No one can go on being a rebel too long without turning into an autocrat.

  Lawrence Durrell

  Long, Rebel, Goes On

  1958 Balthazar, pt.2.

  8 Copy quote

• The realisation of one's own death is the point at which one becomes adult.

  Lawrence Durrell

  Adults, Realisation

  Lawrence Durrell (2015). “The Avignon Quintet: Monsieur, Livia, Constance, Sebastian and Quinx”, p.32, Faber & Faber

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• after all the work of the philosophers on his soul and the doctors on his body, what can we really say we know about a man? That he is, when all is said and done, just a passage for liquids and solids, a pipe of flesh.

  Lawrence Durrell

  Men, Doctors, Soul

  Lawrence Durrell (2012). “The Alexandria Quartet: Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, Clea”, p.70, Faber & Faber

  5 Copy quote

• But I love to feel events overlapping each other, crawling over one another like wet crabs in a basket

  Lawrence Durrell

  Events, Baskets, Crabs

  1958 Balthazar, pt.1.

  7 Copy quote

• Of women, the most we can say, not being Frenchmen, is that they are burrowing animals.

  Lawrence Durrell

  Women, Animal, Burrowing

  Lawrence Durrell (2012). “The Alexandria Quartet: Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, Clea”, p.317, Faber & Faber

  6 Copy quote

• She took kisses like so many coats of paint […] how long and how vainly I searched for excuses which might make her amorality if not palatable at lest understandable. I realize now the time I wasted in this way; instead of enjoying her and turning aside from these preoccupations with the thought, ‘She is untrustworthy as she is beautiful. She takes love as plants do water, lightly, thoughtlessly.

  Lawrence Durrell

  Beautiful, Kissing, Long

  Lawrence Durrell (1957). “Justine: By Lawrence Durrell”

  9 Copy quote

• To write a poem is like trying to catch a lizard without its tail falling off.

  Lawrence Durrell

  Fall, Writing, Trying

  Lawrence Durrell, Earl G. Ingersoll (1998). “Lawrence Durrell: Conversations”, p.29, Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press

  19 Copy quote

• Frost in January minus 20 for a week. Dead birds frozen on the branch—they fall with the first thaw like ripe fruit—death-ripened. We shall all end like them—just a stain in the snow.

  Lawrence Durrell

  Fall, Snow, Bird

  4 Copy quote

• The appalling thing is the degree of charity women are capable of. You see it all the time... love lavished on absolute fools. Love's a charity ward, you know.

  Lawrence Durrell

  Women, Degrees, Charity

  The Observer Interview, 1990.

  10 Copy quote

• Art—the meaning of the pattern of our common actions in reality. The cloth-of-gold that hides behind the sackcloth of reality, forced out by the pain of human memory.

  Lawrence Durrell

  Art, Pain, Memories

  8 Copy quote

• Brazil is bigger than Europe, wilder than Africa, and weirder than Baffin Land.

  Lawrence Durrell

  Europe, Land, Brazil

  Letter to Henry Miller, 1948.

  9 Copy quote

• All artists today are expected to cultivate a little fashionable unhappiness.

  Lawrence Durrell

  Artist, Littles, Today

  Lawrence Durrell (2012). “The Alexandria Quartet: Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, Clea”, p.86, Faber & Faber

  7 Copy quote

• Truth is what most contradicts itself.

  Lawrence Durrell

  Truth, Truth Is

  Lawrence Durrell (2012). “The Alexandria Quartet: Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, Clea”, p.257, Faber & Faber

  5 Copy quote

• The effective in art is what rapes the emotions of your audience without nourishing its values.

  Lawrence Durrell

  Art, Emotion, Audience

  Lawrence Durrell (2012). “The Alexandria Quartet: Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, Clea”, p.265, Faber & Faber

  4 Copy quote

• I am just a refugee from the long slow toothache of English life. It is terrible to love life so much you can hardly breathe!

  Lawrence Durrell

  Love Life, Long, Breathe

  Lawrence Durrell (2012). “The Alexandria Quartet: Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, Clea”, p.273, Faber & Faber

  5 Copy quote

• Love joins and then divides. How else would we be growing?

  Lawrence Durrell

  Love, Growing, Divides

  Lawrence Durrell (2012). “The Alexandria Quartet: Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, Clea”, p.352, Faber & Faber

  6 Copy quote

• He thought and suffered a good deal but he lacked the resolution to dare--the first requisite of a practitioner.

  Lawrence Durrell

  Firsts, Resolution, Dare

  Lawrence Durrell (2012). “The Alexandria Quartet: Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, Clea”, p.23, Faber & Faber

  5 Copy quote

• How grudging memory is, and how bitterly she clutches the raw material of her daily work.

  Lawrence Durrell

  Memories, Raw Materials, Daily Work

  Lawrence Durrell (2012). “The Alexandria Quartet: Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, Clea”, p.129, Faber & Faber

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• Let us define 'man' as a poet perpetually conspiring against himself.

  Lawrence Durrell

  Men, Poet, Conspiring

  Lawrence Durrell (2012). “The Alexandria Quartet: Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, Clea”, p.650, Faber & Faber

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• Sorrow is implicit in love as gravitation is implicit in mass.

  Lawrence Durrell

  Sorrow, Mass, Gravitation

  Lawrence Durrell (2015). “The Avignon Quintet: Monsieur, Livia, Constance, Sebastian and Quinx”, p.68, Faber & Faber

  10 Copy quote

• I have done so many things in my life," she said to the mirror. "Evil things, perhaps. But never unattentively, never wastefully...was I wrong?

  Lawrence Durrell

  Mirrors, Evil, Done

  4 Copy quote

• I had become, with the approach of night, once more aware of loneliness and time - those two companions without whom no journey can yield us anything.

  Lawrence Durrell

  Loneliness, Being Alone, Night

  Lawrence Durrell (2011). “Bitter Lemons of Cyprus”, p.9, Faber & Faber

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• There is no pain compared to that of loving a woman who makes her body accessible to one and yet who is incapable of delivering her true self -- because she does not know where to find it.

  Lawrence Durrell

  Pain, Self, Doe

  Lawrence Durrell (2012). “The Alexandria Quartet: Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, Clea”, p.103, Faber & Faber

  4 Copy quote

• People only see in us the contemptible skirt-fever which rules our actions but completely miss the beauty-hunger underlying it.

  Lawrence Durrell

  People, Missing, Fever

  Lawrence Durrell (2012). “The Alexandria Quartet: Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, Clea”, p.157, Faber & Faber

  4 Copy quote

• It’s only with great vulgarity that you can achieve real refinement, only out of bawdry that you can get tenderness.

  Lawrence Durrell

  Real, Achieve, Refinement

  Lawrence Durrell, Earl G. Ingersoll (1998). “Lawrence Durrell: Conversations”, p.35, Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press

  10 Copy quote

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