Quotes from William Boyd

I was convinced I had overdrawn my balance of good fortune; that whatever haphazard benevolence the impassive universe might hold towards me was all but gone.

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

All family histories, personal histories,are as sketchy and unreliable as histories of the Phoenicians, it seems to me. We should note everything down, fill in the wide gaps if we can. Which is why I am writing this my darlings.

He was always too conscious of himself and of the impression he was creating on others – an infallible sign of the vain and the fraudulent.

It's funny how, sometimes, one can be so convinced, so utterly certain, about something as entirely fickle as strong emotion

It amazes me what compromises we happily live with. We limp along, patching up, improvising.

I say to myself, at last you are in tune with the universe.

As I write this I feel that draining hollowing helplessness that genuine love for another person produces in you. It's at these moments that we know we are going to die.

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

Low-ceilinged and smoke-foxed, it had a curious smell: part beer, part cold fireplace ash, part pipe tobacco.

The idea of a priori moral judgements ('It is morally wrong to inflict gratuitous pain') is completely acceptable to the vast majority of human beings. Only a few philosophers would disagree.

When I occasionally begin to worry about how much wine I drink each day I console myself – or excuse myself – with the thought that I drink wine like a French person. It seems to me almost sinful to sit down to eat food without a glass of wine. And how does one signal the end of the working day without opening a bottle?

Winter reveals the massive, complex, muscular organization of the ancient oak. Like an old man stripped of his Savile Row, tailored suit - no less impressive in his mature nakedness.

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

we think we understand all about the human body but actually we know very little.

What's happened to my life? These ten-year chunks that are doled out to you in passports are a cruel form of memento mori. How many more new passports will I have? One (1965)? Two (1975)? Such a long way off, 1975, yet your passport life seems all too brief. How long did he live? He managed to renew six passports.

It was born of self-confidence, though, this attitude – of success, not chippiness, that debilitating English disease. He

You know that feeling, when you can almost see the two or several directions your life might take ahead of you, a moment when you know that the next choice you are about to make is going to be crucial and possibly final, that there is no going back, and that nothing will ever be the same again?

I thought about the times we'd had in his small garret above Greville's darkroom. And I didn't feel anything. It's strange how strong emotions can be so easily diminished as your life continues; how deepest intimacies become commonplace half-recalled memories-- such as an exotic holiday you once went on, or a cocktail party where you drank far too much, or winning a race at the school sports day. Nothing stirs anymore.

I am as sane as you are.

I am a total stranger, you see. Total.

This was an adventure, I told myself, an intriguing quest, and one that I would regret not seeing through at least a little further along the way.

what massive turbulence of emotion she hid beneath a surface of total calm and placidity.

What drew me down there, I wonder, to the edge of the garden? I remember the summer light--the trees, the bushes,the grass luminously green, basted by the bland, benevolent late-afternoon sun. Was it the light? But there was the laughter, also, coming from where a group of people had gathered by the pond. Someone must have been horsing around making everyone else laugh. The light and laughter, then.