117 Quotes by william boyd

I write - poignantly, in the most heartfelt way - about how I miss her and how I detest my life in this school and she responds with detailed plans for her future life as an archaeologist or philosopher or - new, this - a veterinary surgeon.

All film technique, I am convinced (and like many of my theories I am probably alone in adhering to it), originates in dreaming. We could dream slow motion before the moving camera was invented. In our dreams we could cut between parallel actions, we assembled montage shots long before some self-important Russian claimed to show us how. This is where film derives its particular power. It re-creates on screen what has been going on in our unconscious.

As I write this I feel that draining, hollowing helplessness that genuine love for another person produces in you. It's at these moments that we know we are going to die. Only with Freya, Stella and Gail. Only three. Better than none.

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.

but you’re giving a very good impression of a lovelorn fool pining for his girl.

I don't think they'll ever make a retro Bond.

The last thing you know about yourself is your effect.

When you experience bereavement at a youngish age, you suddenly realise that life is unjust and unfair, that bad things will happen, and you have to take that on board.

Do we change every time we have a new encounter? Are we endlessly mutable? I think these are fascinating questions: it's a rich vein to tap, and I don't think I have exhausted it fully yet.