36 Quotes by Brian Moore

She held him, her arms tight about him, she had never understood it, but when they met, she and her sister and brothers, suddenly all of their wives, husbands, and children seemed members of another race, no part of the Family, that family whose allegiances antedated all others.

We had not written or phoned or called or even sent a lousy card. We were young: we had our troubles. If there is a hell it should be for selfishness.

She watched the glass, a plain woman, changing all to the delightful illusion of beauty. There was still time: for her ugliness was destined to bloom late, hidden first by the unformed gawkiness of youth, budding to plainness in young womanhood and now flowering to slow maturity in her early forties, it still awaited the subtle garishness which only decay could bring to fruition: a garishness which, when arrived at, would preclude all efforts at the mirror game.

What could he be thinking of? He seemed to be trying to remember something, perhaps an engagement, perhaps an excuse to leave her. For eventually, they all made some excuse.

And the bell jangled, the driver started. The bus whirled off, to the last stop, the lonely room, the lonely night.

The Protestants don't believe in Britain and the Catholics don't believe in God. And none of us believes in the future.

And maybe, although it was a thing you could hardly bear to think about, like death or your last judgment, maybe he would be the last one ever and he would walk away now and it would only be a question of waiting for it all to end and hoping for better things in the next world. But that was silly, it was never too late.

I am, always have been, a fool who rushes in, a blurter-out of awkward truths, a speaker-up at parties who, the morning after, filled with guilt, vows that never again, no matter what, but who, faced at the very next encounter with someone whose opinions strike me as unfair, rushes in again, blurting out, breaking all vows.

How did I get so bogged down in ordinariness that even this once I couldn't do the spontaneous thing, the thing I really wanted to do. The future is forbidden to no one. Unless we forbid it ourselves.