The writer must be universal in sympathy and an outcast by nature: only then can he see clearly.

One weekend in the vacation, I was invited to meet her family. They lived in Kent, out on the Orpington line, in one of those suburbs which had stopped concreting over nature at the very...

Because just as all political and historical change sooner or later disappoints, so does adulthood. So does life. Sometimes I think the purpose of life is to reconcile us to its eventual loss by wearing...

A pier is a disappointed bridge.

Women scheme when they are weak, they lie out of fear. Men scheme when they are strong, they lie out of arrogance.

[Flaubert] didn’t just hate the railway as such; he hated the way it flattered people with the illusion of progress. What was the point of scientific advance without moral advance? The railway would merely permit...

In those days, we imagined ourselves as being kept in some kind of holding pen, waiting to be released into our lives. And when the moment came, our lives — and time itself — would...

You can take Lucas to watch football when he’s older,’ she once told me. Ah, the rheumy-eyed grandpa on the terraces inducting the lad into the mysteries of soccer: how to loathe people wearing different...

It’s the best way of telling the truth; it’s a process of producing grand, beautiful, well-ordered lies that tell more truth than any assemblage of facts. Beyond that … [it’s] delight in, and play with,...

History isn’t the lies of the victors, as I once glibly assured Old Joe Hunt; I know that now. It’s more the memories of the survivors, most of whom are neither victorious or defeated.

Pride makes us long for a solution to things – a solution, a purpose, a final cause; but the better telescopes become, the more stars appear.

There is violence in this supposedly tender heart of mine.

Be to, tas skausmas truko neilgai. Kaip minėjau, turiu stiprų savisaugos instinktą. Man pavyko išstumti Veroniką iš širdies ir iš gyvenimo

Everything you invent is true: you can be sure of that. Poetry is a subject as precise as geometry.

And yet it takes only the smallest pleasure or pain to teach us time’s malleability.

What was the point of scientific advance without moral advance? The railway would merely permit more people to move about, meet and be stupid together

5.4 The question of accumulation. If life is a wager, what form does it take? At the racetrack, an accumulator is a bet which rolls on profits from the success of one of the horse...

He feared me as many men fear women: because their mistresses (or their wives) understand them. They are scarcely adult, some men: they wish women to understand them, and to that end they tell them...

What you end up remembering isn’t always the same as what you have witnessed.

But life never lets you go, does it? You can’t put down life the way you put down a book.

Istorija yra nugalėtojų melas, tik reikia pridurti, jog tai ir nugalėtųjų saviapgaulė.

Later on in life, you expect a bit of rest, don’t you? You think you deserve it. I did, anyway. But then you begin to understand that the reward of merit is not life’s business.

History isn’t what happened, history is just what historians tell us.

Life … is a bit like reading. … If all your responses to a book have already been duplicated and expanded upon by a professional critic, then what point is there to your reading? Only...

..books look as if they contain knowledge, while e-readers look as if they contain information.

Ragana, pagalvojau. Jeigu pasaulyje yra moteris, kurią gali įsimylėti ir vis tiek manyti, kad gyvenimo verta atsisakyti, tai toji moteris yra Veronika.

The best life for a writer is the life which helps him write the best books he can.

Most people, in my opinion, steal much of what they are. If they didn’t what poor items they would be.

Vieni jausmai laiką pagreitina, kiti sulėtina, o kartais atrodo, kad jis dingsta – kol galop ateina akimirka, kai jis iš tiesų dingsta ir jau niekada nebesugrįžta

Šeimyninės laimės paslaptį sudaro ne jos pilnumas ar bent jau ne gyvenimas kartu su visais jos nariais

The greatest patriotism is to tell your country when it is behaving dishonorably, foolishly, viciously.

I know this much: that there is objective time, but also subjective time, the kind you wear on the inside of your wrist, next to where the pulse lies. And this personal time, which is...

And perhaps it was also the case that, for all a lifetime’s internal struggling, you were finally no more than what others saw you as. That was your nature, whether you liked it or not.

This […] isn`t something I actually saw, but what you end up remembering isn`t always the same as what you witnessed.

In the letter he left for the coroner he had explained his reasoning (for suicide): that life is a gift bestowed without anyone asking for it; that the thinking person has a philosophical duty to...

If a memory wasn’t a thing but a memory of a memory of a memory, mirrors set in parallel, then what the brain told you now about what it claimed had happened then would be...

When you are young, you think that the old lament the deterioration of life because this makes it easier for them to die without regret. When you are old, you become impatient with the way...

When you’re young you prefer the vulgar months, the fullness of the seasons. As you grow older you learn to like the in-between times, the months that can’t make up their minds. Perhaps it’s a...

Time…give us enough time and our best-supported decisions will seem wobbly, our certainties whimsical.

Everything in art depends on execution: the story of a louse can be as beautiful as the story of Alexander. You must write according to your feelings, be sure those feelings are true, and let...

You can deal with the brain, as I say; it looks sensible, whereas the heart, the human heart, I’m afraid, looks a fucking mess.

Not merely hope, but any burdensome yearning: ambition, hatred, love (especially love) – how rarely do our emotions meet the object they seem to deserve? How hopelessly we signal; how dark the sky; how big...

Some of the freckles I once loved are now closer to liver spots. But it’s still the eyes we look at, isn’t it? That’s where we found the other person, and find them still.

The best form of government is one that is dying, because that means it’s giving way to something else.

We live with such easy assumptions, don’t we? For instance, that memory equals events plus time. But it’s all much odder than this. Who was it said that memory is what we thought we’d forgotten?...

And what percentage of people take up the option to die off?’ She looked at me, her glance telling me to be calm. ‘Oh, a hundred per cent, of course. Over many thousands of years,...

Was this their exact exchange? Almost certainly not. Still, it is my best memory of their exchange.

Though why should we expect age to mellow us? If it isn’t life’s business to reward merit, why should it be life’s business to give us warm, comfortable feelings towards its end? What possible evolutionary...

Sejarah bukanlah apa yang terjadi. Sejarah hanyalah apa yang dituturkan sejarawan kepada kita.

Tai, ką galiausiai prisimeni, ne visada yra tas pats, ką patyrei