William Boyd (writer) - Any Human Heart (2002)

7 Sourced Quotes

View all William Boyd Quotes
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
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
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
There are things in life we don't understand, and when we meet them, all we can do is let them alone.

William Boyd
Is that a good definition of marking the ageing watershed? That moment when you realize - quite rationally, quite unemotionally - that the world in the not-so-distant future will not contain you: that the trees you planted will continue growing but you will not be there to see them.

William Boyd
I have to start my real life soon, before I die of boredom and frustration.

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

William Boyd