Durrell Quotes & Sayings

At last, after much effort, there came a prolonged belch from the mud and Larry shot to the surface and we hauled him up the bank. He stood there, covered with the black and stinking slush, looking like a chocolate statue that has come in contact with a blast furnace; he appeared to be melting as we watched. — Gerald Durrell

I suppose events are simply a sort of annotation of our feelings--the one might be deduced from the other. Time carries us (boldly imagining that we are discrete ego's modeling our own personal futures)--time carries us forward by the momentum of those feelings inside us of which we ourselves are least conscious. — Lawrence Durrell

In her, as an Alexandrian, licence was in a curious way a form of self-abnegation, a travesty of freedom; and if I saw her as an exemplar of the city it was not of Alexandria, or Plotinus that I was forced to think, but of the sad thirtieth child of Valentinus who fell, 'not like Lucifer by rebelling against God, but by desiring too ardently to be united to him'.* — Lawrence Durrell

The owls appeared now, drifting from tree to tree as silently as flakes of soot, hooting in astonishment as the moon rose higher and higher, turning to pink, then gold, and finally riding in a nest of stars, like a silver bubble. — Gerald Durrell

Whatever the heart desires, it purchases at the cost of soul — Lawrence Durrell

Poverty is a great cutter-off and riches a great shutter-off. — Lawrence Durrell

A city becomes a world when one loves one of its inhabitants. — Lawrence Durrell

Remember that the animals and plants have no M.P. they can write to; they can't perform sit-down strikes or, indeed, strikes of any sort; they have nobody to speak for them except us, the human beings who share the world with them but do not own it. — Gerald Durrell

I'm trying to die correctly, but it's very difficult, you know. — Lawrence Durrell

I can't be expected to produce deathless prose in an atmosphere of gloom and eucalyptus. — Gerald Durrell

The effective in art is what rapes the emotions of your audience without nourishing its values. — Lawrence Durrell

The most wonderful, beautiful things in life are the simple things which we have all forgotten. — Gerald Durrell

My Family and Other Saints echoes Gerald Durrell's classic memoir, My Family and Other Animals, not only in its title, but in its wonderful humor and lyrical prose. Like Durrell, Kirin Narayan takes the reader to a fascinating world far from our own, and brings to life its myriad sights, sounds and smells, while revealing the profound cultural beliefs of its people. India is just the most complex character among a cast of characters-family members, gurus, hippies, and neighbors-all of whom I now count as old friends. — Judith Barrington

Truth is a matter of direct apprehension-you can't climb a ladder of mental concepts to it. — Lawrence Durrell

i imagine therefore I belong and am free. — Lawrence Durrell

Love is poetry plus biology. — Lawrence Durrell

Tea would arrive, the cakes squatting on cushions of cream, toast in a melting shawl of butter, cups agleam and a faint wisp of steam rising from the teapot shawl. — Gerald Durrell

If naturalists go to heaven (about which there is considerable ecclesiastical doubt), I hope that I will be furnished with a troop of kakapo to amuse me in the evening instead of television. — Gerald Durrell

Bessie was News, Leaders, and Gossip; Enid was Features, Make-up and general Sub. Whenever they were at a loss for copy they would mercilessly pillage ancient copies of Punch or Home Chat. An occasional hole in the copy was filled with a ghoulish smudge - local block-making had clearly indicated that somewhere a poker-work fanatic had gone quietly out of his mind. In this way the Central Balkan Herald was made up every morning and then delivered to the composition room where the chain-gang quickly reduced it to gibberish. MINISTER FINED FOR KISSING IN PUBIC. WEDDING BULLS RING OUT FOR PRINCESS. QUEEN OF HOLLAND GIVES PANTY FOR EX-SERVICE MEN. MORE DOGS HAVE BABIES THIS SUMMER IN BELGRADE. BRITAINS NEW FLYING-GOAT. — Lawrence Durrell

But throughout my life I have rarely if ever achieved what I wanted by tackling it in a logical fashion. — Gerald Durrell

When I was a child I used to read books by Gerald Durrell, who founded Jersey Zoo. He had a job collecting animals for zoos and for a long time that is what I wanted to do. Later when I was a teenager I had a fantastic English teacher called Mrs. Stafford. Her enthusiasm made me decide to be a writer. — Melvin Burgess

When one is fully extended by day and exhausted every evening one lives differently, without the weight of yesterday or tomorrow on one's shoulders. I — Lawrence Durrell

The national characteristics ... the restless metaphysical curiosity, the tenderness of good living and the passionate individualism. This is the invisible constant in a place with which the ordinary tourist can get in touch just by sitting quite quietly over a glass of wine in a Paris bistro. — Lawrence Durrell

It is not peace we seek but meaning. — Lawrence Durrell

How grudging memory is, and how bitterly she clutches the raw material of her daily work. — Lawrence Durrell

Underneath an artist's preoccupations with sex, society, religion, etc. (all the staple abstractions that allow the forebrain to chatter) there is a soul tortured beyond endurance by the lack of tenderness in the world. — Lawrence Durrell

The heaviest impact of the work of art is in the guts. Art does not reason. It manhandles you and changes you ... — Lawrence Durrell

No history much? Perhaps. Only this ominous Dark beauty flowering under veils, Trapped in the spectrum of a dying style: A village like an instinct left to rust, Composed around the echo of a pistol-shot. — Lawrence Durrell

There is no first world and third world. There is only one world, for all of us to live and delight in. — Gerald Durrell

With all its imperfections lying heavy on its head, I can't help being attached to it because in the writing of it I first heard the sound of my own voice, lame and halting perhaps, but nevertheless my very own. This is an experience no artist ever forgets - the birth cry of a newly born baby of letters, the genuine article. — Lawrence Durrell

Let us define 'man' as a poet perpetually conspiring against himself. — Lawrence Durrell

the indifference of the natural world to the constructions of art — Lawrence Durrell

It's only with great vulgarity that you can achieve real refinement, only out of bawdry that you can get tenderness. — Lawrence Durrell

Gradually the magic of the island [Corfu] settled over us as gently and clingingly as pollen. — Gerald Durrell

High time he had another tutor,' said Larry. 'You leave the house for five minutes and come back and find him disembowelling Moby Dick on the front porch.' 'I'm sure he didn't mean any harm,' said Mother, ' but it was rather silly for him to do it on the veranda. — Gerald Durrell

In these days Melissa's absorbed and provoking gentleness had all the qualities of a rediscovered youth. Her long uncertain fingers - I used to feel them moving over my face when she thought I slept, as if to memorize the happiness we had shared. In her there was a pliancy, a resilience which was Oriental - a passion to serve. My shabby clothes - the way she picked up a dirty shirt seemed to engulf it with an overflowing solicitude; in the morning I found my razor beautifully cleaned and even the toothpaste laid upon the brush in readiness. Her care for me was a goad, provoking me to give my life some sort of shape and style that might match the simplicity of hers. Of her experiences in love she would never speak, turning from them with a weariness and distaste which suggested that they had been born of necessity rather than desire. She paid me the comlpiment of saying: "For the first time I am not afraid to be light-headed or foolish with a man". — Lawrence Durrell

Surely you're joking Theodore?' he protested. 'You mean to say that each snail is both a male and a female?'
'Yes indeed,' said Theodore, adding with masterly understatement, 'it's very curious.'
'Good God,' cried Larry. 'I think it's unfair. All those damned slimy things wandering about seducing each other like mad all over the bushes, and having the pleasures of both sensations. Why couldn't such a gift be given to the human race? That's what I want to know. — Gerald Durrell

Like all young men I set out to be a genius, but mercifully laughter intervened. — Lawrence Durrell

The following day I decided to take the boat to Corfu where my friend Durrell was waiting for me. We pulled out of Piraeus about five in the afternoon, the sun still burning like a furnace. I had made the mistake of buying a second class ticket. When I saw the animals coming aboard, the bedding, all the crazy paraphernalia which the Greeks drag with them on their voyages, I promptly changed to first class, which was only a trifle more expensive than second. I had never traveled first class before on anything, — Henry Miller

Look at all the Eastern writers who've written great Western literature. Kazuo Ishiguro. You'd never guess that The Remains of the Day or Never Let Me Go were written by a Japanese guy. But I can't think of anyone who's ever done the reverse
any Westerner who's written great Eastern literature. Well, maybe if we count Lawrence Durrell - does the Alexandria Quartet qualify as Eastern literature?"
"There is a very simple test," said Vikram. "Is it about bored, tired people having sex?"
"Yes," said the convert, surprised.
"Then it's western. — G. Willow Wilson

Brazil is bigger than Europe, wilder than Africa, and weirder than Baffin Land. — Lawrence Durrell

The loved object is simply one that has shared an experience at the same moment of time, narcissistically; and the desire to be near the beloved object is at first not due to the idea of possessing it, but simply to let the two experiences compare themselves, like reflections in different mirrors. All this may precede the first look, kiss, or touch; precede ambition, pride, or envy; precede the first declarations which mark the turning point - for from here love degenerates into habit, possession, and back to loneliness. — Lawrence Durrell

I meant of course the whole portentous scrimmage of sex itself, the act of penetration which could lead a man to despair for the sake of a creature with two breasts and le croissant as the picturesque Levant slang has it. — Lawrence Durrell

Overflowing with the milk of human kindness, the family had invited everyone they could think of, including people they cordially disliked. — Gerald Durrell

It is not love that is blind, but jealousy. — Lawrence Durrell

Our inventions mirror our secret wishes. — Lawrence Durrell

I see artists as a great battalion moving through paint, words, music towards cosmological interpretation. — Lawrence Durrell

Art - the meaning of the pattern of our common actions in reality. The cloth-of-gold that hides behind the sackcloth of reality, forced out by the pain of human memory. — Lawrence Durrell

Prohibitions create the desire they were intended to cure. — Lawrence Durrell

When man continues to destroy nature, he saws the very branch on which he sits since the rational protection of nature is at the same time the protection of mankind — Gerald Durrell

Does not everything depend on our interpretation of the silence around us? — Lawrence Durrell

It was my birthday. I lay there savouring the feeling of having a whole day to myself when people would give me presents and the family would be forced to accede to any reasonable requests. — Gerald Durrell

It was no half-hearted spring, this: the whole island vibrated with it as though a great, ringing chord had been struck. Everyone and everything heard it and responded. — Gerald Durrell

It is hard to fight with one's heart's desires; whatever it wishes to get, it purchases at the cost of the soul. — Lawrence Durrell

But there are more than five sexes and only demotic Greek seems to distinguish among them. — Lawrence Durrell

I do wish you wouldn't argue with me when I'm knitting. — Gerald Durrell

There are only three things to be done with a woman. You can love her, suffer for her, or turn her into literature. — Lawrence Durrell

He glanced about him to make sure we weren't overheard, leaned forward, and whispered, 'He collects stamps.'
The family looked bewildered.
'You mean he's a philatelist?' said Larry at length.
'No, no, Master Larrys,' said Spiro. 'He's not one of them. He's a married man and he's gots two childrens. — Gerald Durrell

Basle, Zurich, Baden, Paris - the flickering of steel rails over the arterial systems of Europe's body: steel ganglia meeting and dividing away across mountains and valleys. — Lawrence Durrell

It's unthinkable not to love -you'd have a severe nervous breakdown. Or you'd have to be Philip Larkin. — Lawrence Durrell

It's all your fault, Mother,' said Larry austerely; 'you shouldn't have brought us up to be so selfish.' 'I like that!' exclaimed Mother. 'I never did anything of the sort!' 'Well, we didn't get as selfish as this without some guidance,' said Larry. — Gerald Durrell

I believe that all children should be surrounded by books and animals. — Gerald Durrell

All culture corrupts, but French culture corrupts absolutely. — Lawrence Durrell

Of women, the most we can say, not being Frenchmen, is that they are burrowing animals. — Lawrence Durrell

The sense of truth no matter how subjective is necessary for the experience of beauty. — Lawrence Durrell

There is always a philosophy behind the misadventures of men, even if they are unaware of it.' And — Lawrence Durrell

Truth disappears with the telling of it. — Lawrence Durrell

He loved the desert because there the wind blew out one's footsteps like candle flames. — Lawrence Durrell

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. — Lawrence Durrell

The great ecosystems are like complex tapestries - a million complicated threads, interwoven, make up the whole picture. Nature can cope with small rents in the fabric; it can even, after a time, cope with major disasters like floods, fires, and earthquakes. What nature cannot cope with is the steady undermining of its fabric by the activities of man. — Gerald Durrell

Life is like a cucumber. One minute it's in your hand, the next it's up you ass. — Lawrence Durrell

As I watched the pulsing fire among the trees and heard the beat of the drum merge and tremble with the voices, forming an intricate pattern of sound, I knew that someday I would have to return or be haunted forever by the beauty and mystery that is Africa. — Gerald Durrell

Adult ant-lions come in a variety of sizes and, for the most part, rather drab colouring. They look like extremely untidy and demented dragon-flies. They have wings that seem out of all proportion to their bodies and these they flap with a desperate air, as though it required the maximum amount of energy to prevent them from crashing to the earth. — Gerald Durrell

History - the lamp which illumines national character ... — Lawrence Durrell

Journeys, like artists, are born and not made. A thousand differing circumstances contribute to them, few of them willed or determined by the will-whatever we may think. — Lawrence Durrell

We should tackle reality in a slightly jokey way, otherwise we miss its point. — Lawrence Durrell

And I saw her as a sad thirtieth child of Valentine that fell, not as Lucifer rebelling against God, but because she too passionately wanted to be united with him! All things in excess become sin. — Lawrence Durrell

I long to be musical in body and mind. I want style, consort. Not the little mental squirts as if through the ticker-tape of the mind. — Lawrence Durrell

Poetry is what happens when an anxiety meets a technique. — Lawrence Durrell

The Magenpies, obviously suspecting Larry of being a dope smuggler, had fought valiantly with the time of bicarbonate of soda, and had scattered its contents along a line of books, so that they looked like a snow-covered mountain range. — Gerald Durrell

So I went instead and tasted Taki's new white wine. Spiridion! what a wine ... like the blood of a dragon and smooth as a fish ... — Gerald Durrell

People only see in us the contemptible skirt-fever which rules our actions but completely miss the beauty-hunger underlying it. — Lawrence Durrell

One word 'love' has to do service for so many different kinds of the same animal. — Lawrence Durrell

Odd, isn't it? He really was the right man for her in a sort of way; but then as you know, it is a law of love that the so-called 'right' person always comes to soon or too late. — Lawrence Durrell

Ah, you may sit under them, yes. They cast a good shadow, cold as well-water; but that's the trouble, they tempt you to sleep. And you must never, for any reason, sleep beneath a cypress.' He paused, stroked his moustache, waited for me to ask why, and then went on: 'Why? Why? Because if you did you would be changed when you woke. Yes, the black cypresses, they are dangerous. While you sleep, their roots grow into your brains and steal them, and when you wake up you are mad, head as empty as a whistle.' I asked whether it was only the cypress that could do that or did it apply to other trees. 'No, only the cypress,' said the old man, peering up fiercely at the trees above me as though to see whether they were listening; 'only the cypress is the thief of intelligence. So be warned, little lord, and don't sleep here. — Gerald Durrell

Life is more complicated than we think, yet far simpler than anyone dares to imagine — Lawrence Durrell

Art like life is an open secret. — Lawrence Durrell

A drunken whore walks in a dark street at night, shedding snatches of song like petals. Was it in this that Anthony heard the heart-numbing strains of the great music which persuaded him to surrender for ever to the city he loved? The — Lawrence Durrell

Truth is a woman. That is why it is enigmatic. — Lawrence Durrell

No one thing can explain everything; though everything can illuminate something. God, I must be still drunk. If God were anything he would be an art. Sculpture or medicine. But the immense extension of knowledge in this our age, the growth of new sciences, makes it almost impossible for us to digest the available flavours and put them to use. — Lawrence Durrell

Larry was always full of ideas about things of which he had no experience. — Gerald Durrell

Comedians are the nearest to suicide. — Lawrence Durrell

If some people want to believe in Jesus, or Mohammed, or Buddha, or their ancestors, who is to say which is right and which wrong? It seems to me that most of the religions in the world are too dogmatic. They preach the 'live and let live' philosophy, but rarely do they practise it. — Gerald Durrell

If you have tendencies you've got to have scope — Lawrence Durrell

Ask the average person his views on snakes and he will, within the space of ten minutes, talk more nonsense than a brace of politicians. — Gerald Durrell

Yet the presence of death always refreshes experience thus--that is its function: to help us deliberate on the novelty of time. — Lawrence Durrell

There is a pleasure sure
In being mad, which none but madmen know.
Dryden, The Spanish Friar II, i — Gerald Durrell

'All we need is a book,' roared Leslie; 'don't panic, hit 'em with a book. — Gerald Durrell

It was cold in the street and I crossed to the lighted blaze of shops in Rue Fuad. In a grocer's window I saw a small tin of olives with the name Orvieto on it, and overcome by a sudden longing to be on the right side of the Mediterranean, entered the shop: bought it: had it opened there and then: and sitting down at a marble table in that gruesome light I began to eat Italy, its dark scorched flesh, hand-modelled spring soil, dedicated vines. I felt that Melissa would never understand this. I should have to pretend I had lost the money. I did not see at first the great car which she had abandoned in the street with its engine running. She came into the shop with swift and resolute suddenness and said, with the air of authority that Lesbians, or women with money, assume with the obviously indigent: 'What did you mean by your remark about the antinomian nature of irony?' - or some such sally which I have forgotten. — Lawrence Durrell

Everything really desirable has come about because of, or in spite of, wine! — Lawrence Durrell