117 Quotes by william boyd

Sometimes limbo is a tolerable place to be stuck.

I chided her gently, reminding her that you can't make these unilateral pacts with life. You can't say: that's it, my emotions are securely locked away, now I'm impregnable, safe from the world's cruelties and disappointments. Better to take them on, come what may, I said, see what strength you have within you.

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?

It was pleasant - and the sense of otherness was nice, that there were two people involved in this process, that we were each giving something to the other.

he needed the security of other bodies.

A warm sunny evening, the plash and gurgle of the waves in the rock pools, the rush of the cold gin. I thought for the first time of my novel, abandoned, all these years, and I came up, unprompted, with the perfect title. Octet. Octet by Logan Mountstuart. Perhaps I will surprise them all, yet.

When the going gets tough, the tough gets going.

Any fool can “obey” an order,’ Hamo said, darkly. ‘The clever thing is to interpret it.

Those of us who have the luck to enjoy good health forget about this vast parallel universe of the unwell-their daily miseries, their banal ordeals. Only when you cross that frontier into the world of ill-health do you recognize its quiet, massive presence, its brooding permanence.