Any Human Heart Quotes
"Curious how these early linguistic abilities are so fragile, how unthinkingly and easily the brain lets them go."
"Always swim naked when you can, Logan, was the advice he gave to me that day, and I have tried to adhere to it ever since."
"Every life is both ordinary and extraordinary – it is the respective proportions of those two categories that make that life appear interesting or humdrum."
"We keep a journal to entrap that collection of selves that forms us, the individual human being."
"My nature, true to its genetic heritage, is resolutely divided: I love the sea, but I love it viewed from a beach – my feet must always be planted on the strand."
"Then count yourself very fortunate,' said I, 'that one religion at least will accept someone as physically repulsive as you are.'"
"Thank God for Lucy, once again. Delectable, adorable, difficult Lucy."
"I realize now, with a small sense of absolute revelation, what the way ahead involves. The only possible route to the First XV and my colours is now revealed to me: I have to play with reckless, careless stupidity, the grossest foolhardiness."
"Without the company of my few friends, English Literature, History and the rare engagement with some higher mind this school strikes me as a national scandal."
"Parcel from Mother – the books I ordered: Baudelaire, De Quincey, Michael Arlen – and chocolate and a two-foot-long chorizo sausage."
"Hot crumpets with butter and jam – what could be more ambrosial?"
"All you have to do now is find a way of letting Ben and myself witness your love-making."
"I suppose what I have achieved in these few short weeks is extraordinary enough, but, as ever, my predominant emotion is one of disappointment."
"You go to Innsbruck for two hours? What a wasting."
"I must never forget this, I must never forget what happened."
"If we are to survive as individuals we can rely only on those resources provided by our human spirit – appeals to a deity or deities are only a form of pretence."
"Brave words. It’s all gone to his head rather: this seems too rich and romantic a thing to happen to Peter."
"To live your life within confined horizons. To set modest goals, achievable ambitions."
"God knows what he would say to Mother. It’s that absolute candour in him that attracts me."
"And I’ve travelled more as an automaton than a curious tourist – this is not the spirit in which this journey was meant to take place."
"The manners of his parting is any indication the answer must be very little."
"To be here now in Paris with these artists and even modest access to money."
"To set something loose in me and even now it strikes me that the nature of your first, all-consuming sexual experience might determine your needs and appetite for the rest of your life."
"Will bitten-down fingernails always be a sign for me, a form of sexual bookmark?"
"But you can be too intelligent, I said. Sometimes it’s not an asset, it’s a curse."
"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."
"I felt a pure ache of longing for her, like an agonizing stitch in my side."
"Amidst all this abundance and new growth I was struck by a sense of waste, a profound feeling that I’d squandered my time at Oxford in some fundamental way."
"I think I acquitted myself well: I’m pleased with most of the papers – no shocking surprises, no panic attacks, all questions were answered."
"I lie here on a sofa, imagining that Ben’s new apartment is mine and how I would redecorate it."
"I wonder if these early sexual experiences with Tess and Anna warped me irrevocably."
"I walked out of Schools with – if not a spring in my step – a feeling of joyful relief."
"Nunc scio quid sit Amor NowIknowwhatloveisNow I know what love isNowIknowwhatloveis."
"When I think of my youth, what we took for granted, what we assumed was for ever certain, for ever permanent."
"I am forcing myself to read a page of To the Lighthouse each day and am finding it incredibly hard going."
"It terrifies me, the fragility of these moments in our lives."
"We think we’re safe for a while, but it’s a dream. No one’s safe."
"I felt a shivering current of happiness and benevolence flow through me."
"So much nicer to feel the breeze on your tits."
"This is love. This is what love can do to you."
"‘Think of me on Monday morning walking into the BBC,’ Freya said, as we lay in bed, giving a half groan, half scream."
"‘You’ve got to give up your job,’ I said, reaching for her."
"‘I’ll not be your kept woman, Logan,’ she said sternly."
"I don’t care, Logan. You live your life and I’ll live mine. I won’t judge you – just as long as you’re happy. I’d hope you’d do the same for me."
"Love of life, love of humanity. Hatred of injustice, hatred of privilege."
"Now you understand Mrs Woolf’s reputation for charm."
"‘At least she writes,’ Freya said, without thinking."
"‘Spain has nothing to do with you or me, Logan,’ he said."
"Let him abdicate for her, I say – good for him."
"You disgusting piece of filth! You set yourself up with your whore."
"‘Lover of life, lover of humanity. Hater of injustice, hater of privilege.’ Not the worst epitaph a man could have."
"She’s too ill to speak. She never wants to speak to you again."
"I’m so happy, I said to her as we held each other in bed, that I think I might explode."
"You cannot forget a person like Lottie in just one day."
"I pick up this journal again to note that (a) I have finished of Summer at Saint-Jean and that (b) Freya announced this morning that she was pregnant."
"Can there have been a filthier spring than the one we have had this year?"
"I haven’t seen Lottie since the divorce – it’s curious how your old life, or a life you abandon, can just fall away so quickly."
"Thank you, Daddy,’ he said. That feels nice."
"In thirty years’ time, if we’re still here I can come back and see this tree in its maturity."
"We have a little girl. Born at 8 o’clock this morning."
"What did you write in the war? – we can’t just say nothing."
"My profession – writer – is in temporary abeyance."
"I realize she’d lost weight and that was what had aged her – she was always ‘ample’."
"We passed Government House and I saw the Union Jack flying."
"‘Mountstuart,’ he said. ‘Of course! Brought your golf clubs?’"
"What brings you to this moron paradise? Watch out or you’ll die of boredom before you know it."
"This small town, like any small town, is rife with rumour and gossip, intrigue, resentments, vendettas, slights, alliances and misalliances, cliques and sets."
"I begin to understand what the Duchess meant by ‘this moron paradise’."
"Feeling sorry for myself, I telephoned McStay and offered him dinner at the Prince George."
"Most of them are poor labourers or fishermen who live in a sprawling shanty over the ridge from Government House called Grant’s Town."
"The colour bar is almost absolute in the Bahamas – certainly in social terms."
"I stood there, a stick in each hand, wondering what I would do if I wasn’t rescued by nightfall."
"‘Why won’t you fuck me, Logan?’ ‘Because I don’t fucking want to,’ I said."
"I was acting honourably and assumed a similar honour on the Duke’s part."
"At NID it’s an open secret that all our work is now beginning to focus on the forthcoming invasion of Europe."
"After the long months away from each other it was as if our sex-drives had been renewed."
"Dirt is the great give-away when you’re trying to be unobtrusive."
"There is something in the absence of adornment, the nonexistence of clutter."
"The allure the true spy feels – the element of sheer play underneath all the risk and the seriousness of intent, and how intoxicating it was."
"Life at the villa. From my window I had a fine view of the end of a lake and snowy mountains beyond."
"I tried hard not to come to conclusions – it was too early, perhaps they’d let me go?"
"One question kept coming back to nag at me: how did Ludwig know I was at the Hotel Cosmopolitan?"
"It’s an awful bloody terrible tragic thing but you have to see them as victims of a global armed conflict, like the millions of other victims."
"It’s most peculiar possessing so little in the world."
"All beauty, all transcending thoughts, all stimulae and evaluation derive from this circumscribed panorama of Lake Lucerne."
"It's one of those works that will have to find its own voice and conclusion – and even then I won't know if it has succeeded."
"The more I make it resolutely true to life, the more all metaphorical interpretation will be unconsciously supplied by the reader."
"Perhaps the one I'm in love with is Gail... This is probably very foolish of me: she won’t stay the enchanting, funny five-year-old forever."
"You can’t put Jackson Pollock in that company and call him a genius – it’s an obscene misuse of language, not to say totally absurd."
"My soul shrivels. I’ve suggested moving many times to Alannah but she loves this apartment. Maybe I’m not used to living with two young girls. Maybe I’m not happy."
"But my mind is still full of Marius and his fraud."
"I’m fifty years old and can’t be brawling with young men in the streets of New York any more."
"I let him ramble on. He really is an objectionable old CAUC."
"We were the only two suited men in the room. Heavy dark blond hair."
"The idea made me laugh and, hearing my laughter, Alannah joined in, both of us experiencing a form of delightful, mutual, sexual mirth."
"I’m a little concerned, myself, about the eventual outcome of all this."
"The thought lingers, however, that I’m marrying Alannah because it means I’ll have Gail in my life."
"Outridge described me as cyclothymic – a small-scale manic-depressive – which is why, he says, he didn’t give me any electroconvulsive therapy."
"You can tell from the way two people sit beside each other in a bar how intimate they happen to be."
"I was glad she couldn’t see the tears in my eyes."