Lawrence Durrell Quotes

Everything really desirable has come about because of, or in spite of, wine!

Religion is simply art bastardized out of all recognition.

People only see in us the contemptible skirt-fever which rules our actions but completely miss the beauty-hunger underlying it.

She took kisses like so many coats of paint […] how long and how vainly I searched for excuses which might make her amorality if not palatable at lest understandable. I realize now the time I wasted in this way; instead of enjoying her and turning aside from these preoccupations with the thought, ‘She is untrustworthy as she is beautiful. She takes love as plants do water, lightly, thoughtlessly.

It's unthinkable not to love - you'd have a severe nervous breakdown. Or you'd have to be Philip Larkin.

Guilt always hurries towards its complement, punishment: only there does its satisfaction lie.