Quotes from William Boyd

Thousands of German prisoners were being shepherded back to holding pens and it was both striking and disturbing to see how young they were – teenagers in the main, wispy adolescent fuzz on their chins and cheeks, all in uniforms that seemed far too large for them, borrowed from men.

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

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

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 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.

It was astonishing how quickly life could change, how the ground moved beneath you and the landscape you thought you were living in turned out to be entirely different. Like waking up after an earthquake.

We all see the world differently from each other; we all have unique vision.

What happened to your lip, by the way?' 'I was punched in the face by a French philosopher.

Time is a racehorse, eating up the furlongs as it gallops towards the finish line. Look away for a moment, be preoccupied for a moment, and then imagine what has passed you by.

Love is not a feeling. It does not belong to that category of bodily experience which would include, for instance, pain.

Meeting Hettie again made him achingly conscious once more of the irrefutable nature of his obsession with her. Obsession - or love? Or was it something more unhealthy - a kind of craving, an addiction?

we have to accept the lives we've lived. Not imagine lives we might have lived.

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

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

Nicolson described the great aviator thus: 'he is and always will be not only a schoolboy hero, but a schoolboy.' It explains a great deal.

Shirlee opened the teak doors and ushered me in. A thickset man, 40s, swarthy, unshaven, in a loose v-neck t-shirt and carefully

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-far-distant future will not contain you: that the trees you planted will continue growing but you will not be there to see them.

I'd been in New York for nearly eighteen months, now - though I still felt a transient, passing through, and that this apartment, this address, my job and my salary were very temporary aspects of my autobiography and whatever significance this sojourn would have in any retrospective view was impossible to discern.

there was always a considerable stock

Like the button, the wheelbarrow, the spoon and the umbrella, the printed book is one of the truly great inventions of mankind - beautifully efficient and enduringly ideal. The place to acquire these wonderful objects is in a bookshop, where thousands upon thousands of varieties await you. There is no substitute for the real thing.

Dido-my solitary bridesmaid- hadn't yet married Reggie Southover, and she didn't bring him to the wedding. For the first time, I thought she was jealous of me. 'My, my, Lady Farr,' she said, checking the hang of my wedding dress. 'Do I have to curtsey?' 'Only on my birthday. And you can always call me Amory when we're alone.' 'Fuck off!

Wouldn't it be wiser to experience the day ahead and savour it, as if it were my last, and postpone for a while my appointment with my pills and my whisky until the moment comes when I don't feel like coping any more and all anticipation has gone?

Cornell off to realise another impossible dream, righting more geopolitical wrongs. In a way, she thought, you had to admire someone like that. They burned brighter than ordinary mortals.

A list of the thirteen types of photograph (plus an afterthought): Aide-memoire Reportage Work of art Topography Erotica/Pornography Advertisement Abstract image Literature Text Autobiography Compositional Functional illustration Snapshot