6 Quotes by Peter Nichols

The likelihood of meeting anyone who wouldn't make him feel even lonelier seemed increasingly remote. Life was a dwindling process now, not a building proposition. He couldn't imagine being with someone new, opening up, feeling appreciated and understood, without having to explain his dubious non sequiturs and increasingly arcane or redundant frame of reference.

Once someone loses trust, that’s it, Gerald. It’s gone. It’s broken. You can’t repair it with explanations. You can’t wheedle trust back from someone.

One day a Japanese guard came into the 20-year-old Moitessier’s cell intending to kill him. He raised his pistol, but they locked eyes until, inexplicably, the guard lowered the pistol and walked away. Now, years later, tenderized by solitude, Moitessier wished he had spared the rat.

The likelihood of meeting anyone who wouldn’t make him feel even lonelier seemed increasingly remote. Life was a dwindling process now, not a building proposition. He couldn’t imagine being with someone new, opening up, feeling appreciated and understood, without having to explain his dubious non sequiturs and increasingly arcane or redundant frame of reference.

Donald Crowhurst had an extraordinary talent for making people believe him. His power lay in the fact that he had completely convinced himself.

And the seasons, as now, reliably made everything new again. He liked to remember Goethe’s line: “A man can stand anything but a succession of ordinary days.