“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
William Boyd
Born place: in Accra, Ghana
Born date March 7, 1952
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“When we pull away we’re both breathing hard, but I don’t think she’s thinking about her aunt or her mom anymore. “Damn I’m good.”
― Nyrae Dawn, quote from Charade
“You know what it’s like when you go to IKEA and you can’t believe how cheap everything is, and even though you may not need a hundred tea lights, my God, they’re only ninety-nine cents for the whole bag? Or: Sure the throw are filled with a squishy ball of no-doubt toxic whatnot, but they’re so bright and three-for-five-dollars that before you know it you've dropped five hundred bucks, not because you needed any of this crap, but because it was so damn cheap?”
― Maria Semple, quote from Where'd You Go, Bernadette
“I am giving an account of what was, not of what ought or ought not to be.”
― Daniel Defoe, quote from Moll Flanders
“It is certainly not then—not in dreams—but when one is wide awake, in moments of robust joy and achievement, on the highest terrace of consciousness, that mortality has a chance to peer beyond its own limits, from the mast, from the past and its castle tower. And although nothing much can be seen through the mist, there is somehow the blissful feeling that one is looking in the right direction.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, quote from Speak, Memory
“Dess took a deep breath, feeling a rush of relief now that the proclamation had been made. It was sort of like being the first astronomer to spot one of those big dinosaur-extermination-sized asteroids on its way toward Earth. Sure, this was majorly unpleasant news for everyone, including Dess personally, but at least she got to announce it.”
― Scott Westerfeld, quote from Blue Noon
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SpaceBookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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