Quote collection
196 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Early in life, the world divides crudely into those who have had sex and those who haven't. Later, into those who have known love, and those who haven't. Later still - at least, if we are lucky (or, on the other hand, unlucky) - it divides into those who have endured grief, and those who haven't. These divisions are absolute; they are tropics we cross."
"WHORES. Necessary in the nineteenth century for the contraction of syphilis, without which no one could claim genius."
"Memories of childhood were the dreams that stayed with you after you woke."
"When you are in your twenties, even if you're confused and uncertain about your aims and purposes, you have a strong sense of what life itself is, and of what you in life are, and might become. Later.. later there is more uncertainty, more overlapping, more backtracking, more false memories. Back then, you can remember your short life in its entirety. Later, the memory becomes a thing of shreds and patches."
"But I’ve been turning over in my mind the question of nostalgia, and whether I suffer from it. I certainly don’t get soggy at the memory of some childhood knickknack; nor do I want to deceive myself sentimentally about something that wasn’t even true at the time—love of the old school, and so on. But if nostalgia means the powerful recollection of strong emotions—and a regret that such feelings are no longer present in our lives—then I plead guilty."
"To be stupid, and selfish, and to have good health are the three requirements for happiness."
"Books are where things are explained to you; life is where things aren't."
"History is the lies of the victors."
"When you're young - when I was young - you want your emotions to be like the ones you read about in books. You want them to overturn your life, create and define a new reality. Later, I think, you want them to do something milder, something more practical: you want them to support your life as it is and has become. You want them to tell you that things are OK. And is there anything wrong with that?"
"Irony - The modern mode: either the devil’s mark or the snorkel of sanity."
"Time...give us enough time and our best-supported decisions will seem wobbly, our certainties whimsical."
"Do not imagine that Art is something which is designed to give gentle uplift and self-confidence . Art is not a brassiere. At least, not in the English sense. But do not forget that brassiere is the French word for life-jacket."
"Pride makes us long for a solution to things – a solution, a purpose, a final cause; but the better telescopes become, the more stars appear."
"[Literature is] a process of producing grand, beautiful, well-ordered lies that tell more truth than any assemblage of facts."
"As I've explained to my wife many times, you have to kill your wife or mistress to get on the front page of the papers."
"Global warming is more of a blessing than a curse."
"What you end up remembering isn't always the same as what you have witnessed."
"I have an instinct for survival, for self-preservation."
"I had wanted life not to bother me too much, and had succeeded - and how pitiful that was."
"When we're young, everyone over the age of thirty looks middle-aged, everyone over fifty antique. And time, as it goes by, confirms that we weren't that wrong. Those little age differentials, so crucial and so gross when we are young erode. We end up all belonging to the same category, that of the non-young. I've never much minded this myself."