Lawrence Durrell Quotations

Journeys, like artists, are born and not made. A thousand differing circumstances contribute to them, few of them willed or determined by the will-whatever we may think.

You see, nothing matters except pleasure - which is the opposite of happiness, its tragic part, I expect.

Sorrow is implicit in love as gravitation is implicit in mass.

The realisation of one's own death is the point at which one becomes adult.

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.

Love is like trench warfare - you cannot see the enemy, but you know he is there and that it is wiser to keep your head down.

I am just a refugee from the long slow toothache of English life. It is terrible to love life so much you can hardly breathe!

Odd, isn't it? He really was the right man for her in a sort of way; but then as you know, it is a law of love that the so-called 'right' person always comes to soon or too late.

How grudging memory is, and how bitterly she clutches the raw material of her daily work.

The loved object is simply one that has shared an experience at the same moment of time, narcissistically; and the desire to be near the beloved object is at first not due to the idea of possessing it, but simply to let the two experiences compare themselves, like reflections in different mirrors. All this may precede the first look, kiss, or touch; precede ambition, pride, or envy; precede the first declarations which mark the turning point—for from here love degenerates into habit, possession, and back to loneliness.