Lawrence Durrell Quotes - Page 3

Quotes about:

• Everything really desirable has come about because of, or in spite of, wine!

  Lawrence Durrell

  Wine, Spite, Desirable

  Lawrence Durrell (2011). “Caesar's Vast Ghost”, p.12, Faber & Faber

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• Everyone loathes his own country and countrymen if he is any sort of artist.

  Lawrence Durrell

  Country, Patriotic, Artist

  Letter to Henry Miller, 1948.

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• I have decided to leave Clea’s last letter un-answered. I no longer wish to coerce anyone, to make promises, to think of life in terms of compacts, resolutions, covenants. It will be up to Clea to interpret my silence according to her own needs and desires, to come to me if she has need or not, as the case may be. Does not everything depend on our interpretation of the silence around us?

  Lawrence Durrell

  Thinking, Silence, Promise

  Lawrence Durrell (2012). “The Alexandria Quartet: Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, Clea”, p.180, Faber & Faber

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• What are stars but points in the body of God where we insert the healing needles of our terror and longing?

  Lawrence Durrell

  Stars, Healing, Body

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• Shyness has laws you can only give yourself; tragically to those who least understand.

  Lawrence Durrell

  Law, Giving, Dating

  Lawrence Durrell (2012). “The Alexandria Quartet: Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, Clea”, p.87, Faber & Faber

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• A woman's best love letters are always written to the man she is betraying.

  Lawrence Durrell

  Love, Men, Letters

  Lawrence Durrell (1991). “Clea”, Penguin Group USA

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• 'We live' writes Pursewarden somewhere 'lives based upon selected fictions. Our view of reality is conditioned by our position in space and time — not by our personalities as we like to think. Thus every interpretation oа reality is based upon a unique position. Two paces east or west and the whole picture is changed.

  Lawrence Durrell

  Writing, Unique, Reality

  "The Alexandria Quartet: Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, Clea".

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• The heaviest impact of the work of art is in the guts. Art does not reason. It manhandles you and changes you.

  Lawrence Durrell

  Art, Impact, Doe

  Lawrence Durrell (1952). “Key to modern poetry”

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• Guilt always hurries towards its complement, punishment: only there does its satisfaction lie.

  Lawrence Durrell

  Lying, Punishment, Guilt

  Lawrence Durrell (2012). “The Alexandria Quartet: Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, Clea”, p.110, Faber & Faber

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• It's unthinkable not to love - you'd have a severe nervous breakdown. Or you'd have to be Philip Larkin.

  Lawrence Durrell

  Love, Nervous, Breakdown

  The Observer Interview, 1990.

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• Truth is a matter of direct apprehension-you can't climb a ladder of mental concepts to it.

  Lawrence Durrell

  Truth, Ladders, Matter

  Lawrence Durrell (2012). “The Alexandria Quartet: Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, Clea”, p.285, Faber & Faber

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• We should tackle reality in a slightly jokey way, otherwise we miss its point.

  Lawrence Durrell

  Reality, Missing, Way

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• All culture corrupts, but French culture corrupts absolutely.

  Lawrence Durrell

  French Culture, Culture

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• Life, the raw material, is only lived in potentia until the artist deploys it in his work.

  Lawrence Durrell

  Artist, Raw Materials, Materials

  Lawrence Durrell (2012). “The Alexandria Quartet: Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, Clea”, p.58, Faber & Faber

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• I see artists as a great battalion moving through paint, words, music towards cosmological interpretation.

  Lawrence Durrell

  Moving, Artist, Paint

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• To be the equal of reality you must learn how to ignore it without danger.

  Lawrence Durrell

  Reality, Danger, Equal

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• But I love to feel events overlapping each other, crawling over one another like wet crabs in a basket

  Lawrence Durrell

  Events, Baskets, Crabs

  1958 Balthazar, pt.1.

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• I'm trying to die correctly, but it's very difficult, you know.

  Lawrence Durrell

  Funny, Death, Trying

  The Sunday Times Interview, 1988.

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• The artist's work constitutes the only satisfactory relationship he can have with his fellow men since he seeks his real friends among the dead and the unborn.

  Lawrence Durrell

  Real, Artist, Men

  Lawrence Durrell (2012). “The Alexandria Quartet: Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, Clea”, p.411, Faber & Faber

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• Of women, the most we can say, not being Frenchmen, is that they are burrowing animals.

  Lawrence Durrell

  Women, Animal, Burrowing

  Lawrence Durrell (2012). “The Alexandria Quartet: Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, Clea”, p.317, Faber & Faber

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• She took kisses like so many coats of paint […] how long and how vainly I searched for excuses which might make her amorality if not palatable at lest understandable. I realize now the time I wasted in this way; instead of enjoying her and turning aside from these preoccupations with the thought, ‘She is untrustworthy as she is beautiful. She takes love as plants do water, lightly, thoughtlessly.

  Lawrence Durrell

  Beautiful, Kissing, Long

  Lawrence Durrell (1957). “Justine: By Lawrence Durrell”

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• To write a poem is like trying to catch a lizard without its tail falling off.

  Lawrence Durrell

  Fall, Writing, Trying

  Lawrence Durrell, Earl G. Ingersoll (1998). “Lawrence Durrell: Conversations”, p.29, Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press

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• Frost in January minus 20 for a week. Dead birds frozen on the branch—they fall with the first thaw like ripe fruit—death-ripened. We shall all end like them—just a stain in the snow.

  Lawrence Durrell

  Fall, Snow, Bird

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• The appalling thing is the degree of charity women are capable of. You see it all the time... love lavished on absolute fools. Love's a charity ward, you know.

  Lawrence Durrell

  Women, Degrees, Charity

  The Observer Interview, 1990.

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• Comedians are the nearest to suicide.

  Lawrence Durrell

  Suicide, Comedian

  Lawrence Durrell (2015). “The Avignon Quintet: Monsieur, Livia, Constance, Sebastian and Quinx”, p.199, Faber & Faber

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