Nothing like poetry when you lie awake at night. It keeps the old brain limber. It washes away the mud and sand that keeps on blocking up the bends. Like waves to make the pebbles dance on my old floors. And turn them into rubies and jacinths; or at any rate, good imitations.
Joyce CaryOld men when they begin to hear the last trumpet, on the morning breeze, often have a kind of absent-minded smile; like people listening. And their smiles are just politeness.
Joyce CaryNo honest hardworking official likes to see good money disappearing into the hands of the Treasury at the end of the financial year.
Joyce CaryA friend of mine tells me that a Beethoven symphony can solve for him a problem of conduct. I've no doubt that it does so simply by giving him a sense of the tragedy and the greatness of human destiny, which makes his personal anxieties seem small, which throws them into a new proportion.
Joyce Cary