Lawrence Durrell Quotes

The richest love is that which submits to the arbitration of time.

The 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.

Whatever the heart desires, it purchases at the cost of soul

I don’t believe one reads to escape reality. A person reads to confirm a reality he knows is there, but which he has not experienced.

Like all young men I set out to be a genius, but mercifully laughter intervened.

We are all hunting for rational reasons for believing in the absurd.

The 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 point—for from here love degenerates into habit, possession, and back to loneliness.

Travel can be one of the most rewarding forms of introspection.

Truth is a woman. That is why it is enigmatic.

Life is more complicated than we think, yet far simpler than anyone dares to imagine

Lovers can find nothing to say to each other that has not been said and unsaid a thousand times over. Kisses were invented to translate such nothings into wounds

Perhaps our only sickness is to desire a truth which we cannot bear rather than to rest content with the fictions we manufacture out of each other.

Try and travel with the eyes of the spirit wide open, and not too much factual information. To tune in, without reverence, idly -- but with real inward attention. It is to be had for the feeling, that mysterious sense of rapport, of identity with the ground. You can extract the essence of a place once you know how. If you just get as still as a needle you'll be there.

Does not everything depend on our interpretation of the silence around us?

A city becomes a world when one loves one of its inhabitants.

It is not peace we seek but meaning.

Truth disappears with the telling of it.

Who invented the human heart, I wonder? Tell me, and then show me the place where he was hanged.

Science is the poetry of the intellect and poetry the science of the heart's affections.

It is not love that is blind, but jealousy.

A taste older than meat, older than wine. A taste as old as cold water.

Music was invented to confirm human loneliness.

Somewhere 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.

An idea is like a rare bird which cannot be seen. What one sees is the trembling of the branch it has just left.

They say that if you get bored enough with calamity you can learn to laugh.