Quotes from Brazzaville Beach

William Boyd ·  320 pages

Rating: (4K votes)


“The last thing we learn about ourselves is our effect.”
― William Boyd, quote from Brazzaville Beach


“I have teken refuge in the doctrine that advises one not to seek tranquility in certainty but in permanently suspended judgement.”
― William Boyd, quote from Brazzaville Beach


“What can I know? Nothing for sure. What ought I to do? Try not to hurt anyone. What may I hope for? For the best (but it won’t make any difference).”
― William Boyd, quote from Brazzaville Beach


“Take a look at anyone’s life. Take a look at your own. In the long fold catastrophe that makes up your three-score years and ten you will encounter many cusp catastrophes along the way.”
― William Boyd, quote from Brazzaville Beach


“She was happy. Her father had always told her to make sure and recognise that state when it arrived, and acknowledge it. 'It's like money in the bank, old girl', he would say ...”
― William Boyd, quote from Brazzaville Beach



“She felt weary and careworn, in the way one often does before the big job of work is tackled; that sense of premature or projected exhaustion that is the breeding ground of all procrastination.”
― William Boyd, quote from Brazzaville Beach


“All the itch and clutter of the world, its bother and fuss, its nagging pettiness, can wear you down so easily. And this is why I like the beach ...”
― William Boyd, quote from Brazzaville Beach


“I stopped and filled my lungs, smelling Africa - smelling dust, woodsmoke, a perfume from a flower, something musty, something decaying.”
― William Boyd, quote from Brazzaville Beach


“I should learn to be more craftily evasive, I thought: a bad evasion is tantamount to telling the truth.”
― William Boyd, quote from Brazzaville Beach


“There was something facile and shallow about male beauty, she thought.”
― William Boyd, quote from Brazzaville Beach



“Reasonable behavior was the last thing you wanted. You felt as if the resolution of human problems demanded passion and brute unreason, some spitting and shouting. This absence of recrimination, of accusation and counter-accusation, the lack of long-term unspoken resentments and grudges suddenly unearthed and exposed in the heat of argument, disturbed her.”
― William Boyd, quote from Brazzaville Beach


About the author

William Boyd
Born place: in Accra, Ghana
Born date March 7, 1952
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Popular quotes

“Hang the boy, can't I never learn anything? Ain't he played tricks on me enough like that for me to be looking out for him by this time? But old fools is the biggest fools there is. Can;t learn an old dog new tricks, as the saying is. But my goodness, he never plays them alike, two days, and how is a body to know what's coming? He 'pears to know just how long he can torment me before I get my dander up and he knows if he can make out to put me off for a minute or make me laugh, it's all down again and I can't hit him a lick. I ain't doing my duty by that boy, and that's the Lord's truth, goodness knows. Spare the rod and spile the child, as the Good Book says. I'm a-laying up sin and suffering for the both of us, I know. He's full of the Old Scratch, but laws-a-me! he's my own dead sister's boy, poor thing, and I ain't got the heart to lash him, somehow. Every time I let him off, my conscience does hurt me so, and every time I hit him my old heart almost breaks. Well-a-well, man that is born of woman is of few days and full of trouble, as the Scripture says, and I reckon it's so. He'll play hooky this evening, and I'll just be obleeged to make him work tomorrow, to punish him. It's mighty hard to make him work Saturdays, when all the boys is having holiday, but he hates work more than he hates anything else, and I've got to do some of my duty by him, or I'll be the ruination of the child.”
― Mark Twain, quote from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer


“For the first time in a long time I thought about Maman. I felt as if I understood why at the end of her life she had taken a 'fiancé,' why she had played at beginning again. Even there, in that home where lives were fading out, evening was a kind of wistful respite. So close to death, Maman must have felt free then and ready to live it all again. Nobody, nobody had the right to cry over her. And I felt ready to live it all again too.”
― Albert Camus, quote from The Stranger


“When the sea goes down, there will come from the mainland boats and men. And they will find ten dead bodies and an unsolved problem on Indian Island.”
― Agatha Christie, quote from And Then There Were None


“Who told you that there is no true, faithful, eternal love in this world! May the liar’s vile tongue be cut out!”
― Mikhail Bulgakov, quote from The Master and Margarita


“Everything in this room is edible. Even I'm edible. But, that would be called canibalism. It is looked down upon in most societies.”
― Roald Dahl, quote from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory


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