Lawrence Durrell
Lawrence Durrell
Lawrence George Durrellwas an expatriate British novelist, poet, dramatist, and travel writer...
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth27 February 1912
ideas bird branches
An idea is like a rare bird which cannot be seen. What one sees is the trembling of the branch it has just left.
thinking complicated life-is
Life is more complicated than we think, yet far simpler than anyone dares to imagine
reality danger equal
To be the equal of reality you must learn how to ignore it without danger.
writing unique reality
We live" writes Pursewarden somewhere, "lives based upon selected fictions. Our view of reality is conditioned by our position in space and time - not by our personalities as we like to think. Thus every interpretation of reality is based upon a unique position. Two paces east or west and the whole picture is changed.
people missing fever
People only see in us the contemptible skirt-fever which rules our actions but completely miss the beauty-hunger underlying it.
mirrors evil done
I have done so many things in my life," she said to the mirror. "Evil things, perhaps. But never unattentively, never wastefully...was I wrong?
secret approach idleness
I suppose the secret of his success is in his tremendous idleness which almost approaches the supernatural.
mean islands sea
…I once found a list of diseases as yet unclassified by medical science, and among these there occurred the word Islomania, which was described as a rare but by no means unknown affliction of spirit. There are people…who find islands somehow irresistible. The mere knowledge that they are on an island, a little world surrounded by the sea, fills them with an indescribable intoxication. These born “islomanes”…are direct descendents of the Atlanteans
art emotion audience
The effective in art is what rapes the emotions of your audience without nourishing its values.
stars healing body
What are stars but points in the body of God where we insert the healing needles of our terror and longing?
pain self doe
There is no pain compared to that of loving a woman who makes her body accessible to one and yet who is incapable of delivering her true self -- because she does not know where to find it.
funny death trying
I'm trying to die correctly, but it's very difficult, you know.
truth telling-the-truth disappear
Truth disappears with the telling of it.
desire bears fiction
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.