'We live' writes Pursewarden somewhere 'lives based upon selected fictions. Our view of reality is conditioned by our position in space and time โ not by our personalities as we like to think. Thus every interpretation oะฐ reality is based upon a unique position. Two paces east or west and the whole picture is changed.
Lawrence DurrellOdd, 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.
Lawrence DurrellI donโt believe one reads to escape reality. A person reads to confirm a reality he knows is there, but which he has not experienced.
Lawrence DurrellScience is the poetry of the intellect and poetry the science of the heart's affections.
Lawrence DurrellHe thought and suffered a good deal but he lacked the resolution to dare--the first requisite of a practitioner.
Lawrence DurrellWhat are stars but points in the body of God where we insert the healing needles of our terror and longing?
Lawrence DurrellThe artist's work constitutes the only satisfactory relationship he can have with his fellow men since he seeks his real friends among the dead and the unborn.
Lawrence DurrellA diary is the last place to go if you wish to seek the truth about a person. Nobody dares to make the final confession to themselves on paper: or at least, not about love.
Lawrence DurrellArtโthe meaning of the pattern of our common actions in reality. The cloth-of-gold that hides behind the sackcloth of reality, forced out by the pain of human memory.
Lawrence DurrellShyness has laws you can only give yourself; tragically to those who least understand.
Lawrence DurrellThese are the moments which are not calculable, and cannot be assessed in words; they live on in the solution of memory, like wonderful creatures, unique of their own kind, dredged up from the floors of some unexplored ocean.
Lawrence DurrellWe are the children of our landscape; it dictates behavior and even thought in the measure to which we are responsive to it.
Lawrence DurrellSomewhere in the heart of experience there is an order and a coherence which we might purprise if we were attentive enough, loving enough, or patient enough.
Lawrence DurrellThe cocktail party - as the name itself indicates - was originally invented by dogs. They are simply bottom-sniffings raised to the rank of formal ceremonies.
Lawrence DurrellHow grudging memory is, and how bitterly she clutches the raw material of her daily work.
Lawrence DurrellThe whole Mediterranean, the sculpture, the palm, the gold beads, the bearded heroes, the wine, the ideas, the ships, the moonlight, the winged gorgons, the bronze men, the philosophers - all of it seems to rise in the sour, pungent taste of these black olives between the teeth. A taste older than meat, older than wine. A taste as old as cold water.
Lawrence DurrellThe 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 pointโfor from here love degenerates into habit, possession, and back to loneliness.
Lawrence DurrellI had become, with the approach of night, once more aware of loneliness and time - those two companions without whom no journey can yield us anything.
Lawrence DurrellI suppose the secret of his success is in his tremendous idleness which almost approaches the supernatural.
Lawrence DurrellThey flower spontaneously out of the demands of our natures - and the best of them lead us not only outward in space, but inward as well.
Lawrence DurrellI have done so many things in my life," she said to the mirror. "Evil things, perhaps. But never unattentively, never wastefully...was I wrong?
Lawrence DurrellVery few people realise that sex is a psychic and not a physical act. The clumsy coupling of human beings is simply a biological paraphrase of this truth - a primitive method of introducing minds to each other, engaging them. But most people are stuck in the physical aspect, unaware of the poetic rapport which it so clumsily tries to teach.
Lawrence DurrellThe effective in art is what rapes the emotions of your audience without nourishing its values.
Lawrence DurrellWho invented the human heart, I wonder? Tell me, and then show me the place where he was hanged.
Lawrence DurrellI have decided to leave Cleaโs last letter un-answered. I no longer wish to coerce anyone, to make promises, to think of life in terms of compacts, resolutions, covenants. It will be up to Clea to interpret my silence according to her own needs and desires, to come to me if she has need or not, as the case may be. Does not everything depend on our interpretation of the silence around us?
Lawrence DurrellI see artists as a great battalion moving through paint, words, music towards cosmological interpretation.
Lawrence Durrell