“We keep a journal to entrap that collection of selves that forms us, the individual human being.”

Any Human Heart

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“It's true: lives do drift apart for no obvious reason. We're all busy people,we can't spend our time simply trying to stay in touch. The test of a friendship is if it can weather these inevitable gaps.”
― William Boyd, Any Human Heart

 “I have to start my real life soon, before I die of boredom and frustration.”
― William Boyd, Any Human Heart

 “True learning only occurs when you love the subject you are studying and then the acquiring of knowledge is effortless because it is also a pleasure.”
― William Boyd, Any Human Heart

“We keep a journal to entrap that collection of selves that forms us, the individual human being.”
― William Boyd, Any Human Heart

 “The pleasures of my life here are simple – simple, inexpensive and democratic. A warm hill of Marmande tomatoes on a roadside vendor’s stall. A cold beer on a pavement table of the Café de France – Marie Thérèse inside making me a sandwich au camembert. Munching the knob of a fresh baguette as I wander back from Sainte-Sabine. The farinaceous smell of the white dust raised by a breeze from the driveway. A cuckoo sounding the perfectly silent woods beyond the meadow. A huge grey, cerise, pink, orange and washed-out blue of a sunset seen from my rear terrace. The drilling of the cicadas at noon – the soft dialing-tone of the crickets at dusk slowly gathers. A good book, a hammock and a cold, beaded bottle of blanc sec. A rough red wine and steak frites. The cool, dark, shuttered silence of my bedroom – and, as I go to sleep, the prospect that all this will be available to me again, unchanged, tomorrow.”
― William Boyd, Any Human Heart

 “I felt shocked and then saddened. life does this to you sometimes - leads you up a path and then drops you in the shit, to mix a metaphor.”
― William Boyd, Any Human Heart

 “Are our lives just the aggregate of the lies we've told? ('Lives' - the 'v' is silent.)”
― William Boyd, Any Human Heart

 “It terrifies me, the fragility of these moments in our lives.”
― William Boyd, Any Human Heart

 “We talked filth for a pleasant half hour.”
― William Boyd, Any Human Heart

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“Every life is both ordinary and extraordinary - it is the respective proportion of those two categories that make that life appear interesting or humdrum.”
― William Boyd, Any Human Heart

 “There are things in life we don't understand, and when we meet them, all we can do is let them alone.”
― William Boyd, Any Human Heart

 “When we parted, she held on to me tight and said, "I love you, Logan. Don't let's lose touch.' I couldn't stop the tears and neither could she, so she lit a cigarette and I said it looked like rain wasn't far off, and somehow we managed to part.

As I write this I feel that draining, hollowing helplessness that genuine love for another produces in you. It's at these moments that we know that we are going to die. Only with Freya, Stella and Gail. Only three. Better than none.”
― William Boyd, Any Human Heart

 

“Why does the sea induce these feelings of transcendence in us? Is it because an unobstructed view of overarching sky meeting endlessly stirring water is as close as we can come on this earth to a visual symbol of the infinite?”
― William Boyd, Any Human Heart

 “Those were the years when I was truly happy. Knowing that is both a blessing and a curse. It's good to acknowledge that you found true happiness in your life - in that sense your life has not been wasted. But to admit that you will never be happy like that again is hard.”
― William Boyd, Any Human Heart

 “But you can be too intelligent, I said. Sometimes it's not an asset it's a curse.”
― William Boyd, Any Human Heart

 “Humankind can tolerate only so much rejection.”
― William Boyd, Any Human Heart

 “We're not ready for it - for people our age to die. We think we're safe for a while, but it's a dream. No one's safe.”
― William Boyd, Any Human Heart

 “You think it begins to diminish with time, the pain, then it comes back and hits you with a rawness and freshness you had forgotten.”
― William Boyd, Any Human Heart

 “I experienced a form of grief so intense and pure I thought it would kill me.”
― William Boyd, Any Human Heart

 “I love to use these phrases - 'with the greatest respect', 'in all modest', 'I humbly submit' - which in fact always imply the complete opposite.”
― William Boyd, Any Human Heart

 “When it's mutual, a man and a woman know, instinctively, wordlessly. They may do nothing about it, but the knowledge of that shared desire is out there in the world - as obvious as neon, saying: I want you, I want you, I want you.”
― William Boyd, Any Human Heart

 “Are there aspects of our lives - things we do, feel and think - that we daren't confess, even to ourselves, even in the absolute privacy of our private record.”
― William Boyd, Any Human Heart

 “I felt truly happy for the first time in years. Such moments should be logged and noted.”
― William Boyd, Any Human Heart

 “Because it seems to me that to be human you have to be able to compromise.”
― William Boyd, Any Human Heart

 

 “A Horrible thought: could this be the pattern of my life ahead? Every ambition thwarted, every dream stillborn? But a seconds reflection tells me that what I'm currently experiencing is shared by all sentient, suffering human beings, except for the very, very few: the genuinely talented - the odd, rare genius - and, of course, the exceptionally lucky swine.”
― William Boyd, Any Human Heart

 “A warm sunny evening, the plash and gurgle of the waves in the rock pools, the rush of the cold gin. I thought for the first time of my novel, abandoned, all these years, and I came up, unprompted, with the perfect title. Octet. Octet by Logan Mountstuart. Perhaps I will surprise them all, yet.”
― William Boyd, Any Human Heart

 “All great artists are doubters.”
― William Boyd, Any Human Heart

 “Is it possible to live reasonably without lying? Do lies form the natural foundation of all human relationships, the thread that stitches our individual selves together?”
― William Boyd, Any Human Heart

 “When I think of my youth, he went in, what we took for granted, what we assumed was for ever certain, for ever permanent.”
― William Boyd, Any Human Heart

 “It's amazing how sudden the effect is - it must be the result of a deep atavistic mating urge buried inside us. A glance and you think: 'Yes, this is the one, this one is right for me.' Every instinct in your body seems to sing in unison.”
― William Boyd, Any Human Heart