21 Quotes by Patrick Leigh Fermor

I fell asleep among the beer mugs and when I woke, I couldn’t think where I was.

The Laconian peninsula lay weightlessly along the eastern horizon and, slightly more substantial, the outline of Elaphonisi – Stag-Island – loomed between us. Wraithlike on the Lybian Sea which expanded southwards far beyond the divider-point capes of Malea and Matapan, hovered Cythera once again, and beyond it, hardly discernible, Anticythera, the last stepping stone to the two stormy western capes of Crete.

My mother was filled with apprehension to begin with; we pored over the atlas, and, bit by bit as we pored, the comic possibilities began to unfold in absurd imaginary scenes until we were falling about with laughter; and by the time I caught the train to London next morning, she was infected with my excitement.