William Boyd
William Boyd
William Boyd, CBEis a British novelist and screenwriter...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth7 March 1952
things-in-life can-do
There are things in life we don't understand, and when we meet them, all we can do is let them alone.
judgement doctrine tranquility
I have teken refuge in the doctrine that advises one not to seek tranquility in certainty but in permanently suspended judgement.
common-humanity kitchen spy
I stood there in the kitchen, watching her staring across the meadow still searching for her nemesis and I thought, suddenly, that this is all our lives - this is the one fact that applies to us all, that makes us what we are, our common mortality, our common humanity. One day someone is going to come and take us away: you don't need to have been a spy, I thought, to feel like this.
taken family-and-friends world
The only times we are consciously aware of the authorship of a photograph, I would argue, are when we contemplate the photographs we ourselves have taken (or those of friends and family) or when we go deliberately to the photographers monograph or exhibition. The signed image - the appropriated, the owned image - is by far the rarest in this pullulating world of pictures.
bereavement age unjust
When you experience bereavement at a youngish age, you suddenly realise that life is unjust and unfair, that bad things will happen, and you have to take that on board.
rejection tolerate humankind
Humankind can tolerate only so much rejection.
interesting way television
In some ways, you could argue, television is doing far more interesting work than the movies. It's more fulfilling.
people novel
My novels are often about people who are in love or attracted to each other.
sometimes stuck limbo
Sometimes limbo is a tolerable place to be stuck.
views acting tools
With film, you have very limited tools to convey subjectivity - voiceover, the camera's point of view, good acting - but even the very best actor in the world is crude by comparison with what you can do in a written paragraph.
lasts effects
The last thing we learn about ourselves is our effect.
mad drunk half
She's half mad and three parts drunk.
filth half hours
We talked filth for a pleasant half hour.
self individual form
We keep a journal to entrap that collection of selves that forms us, the individual human being.