117 Quotes by william boyd

There are things in life we don’t understand, and when we meet them, all we can do is let them alone.

No, no – you have to understand, Lysander, here in Vienna, in this ramshackle empire of ours, suicide is a perfectly reasonable course of action. Everyone will know your true feelings and why you had no choice but to do it – no one will condemn you or blame you.

In some ways, you could argue, television is doing far more interesting work than the movies. It’s more fulfilling.

Film is a medium of clear lines and broad strikes – which can be fantastic – but compared to the subtleties and nuances of a novel, it doesn’t even get close.

That’s all your life amounts to in the end: the aggregate of all the good luck and the bad luck you experience. Everything is explained by that simple formula. Tot it up – look at the respective piles. There’s nothing you can do about it: nobody shares it out, allocates it to this one or that, it just happens. We must quietly suffer the laws of man’s condition, as Montaigne says.

She’s half mad and three parts drunk.

She bought a pint of whiskey and woke to discover that she had managed to construct a presentable hangover for herself on the morning of 1 January.

When it’s mutual, a man and a woman know, instinctively, wordlessly. They may do nothing about it, but the knowledge of that shared desire is out there in the world – as obvious as neon, saying: I want you, I want you, I want you.

It’s good to acknowledge that you found true happiness in your life – in that sense your life has not been wasted. But to admit that you will never be happy like that again is hard.