Corelli's Mandolin

by Louis de Bernières

That courage which, as Homer says, the god breathes into the soul of heroes, Love of his own nature infuses into the lover. Love will make men dare to die for their beloved – Love alone.’

I am not a cynic, but I do know that history is the propaganda of the victors.

the ultimate truth is that history ought to consist only of the anecdotes of the little people who are caught up in it.

‘Did you know that childhood is the only time in our lives when insanity is not only permitted to us, but expected?’

every man needs an obsession in order to enjoy life, and it was so much the better if that obsession was constructive.

We should care for each other more than we care for ideas, or else we will end up killing each other. Am I not right?’

I have come to understand that God did not make this world a garden, that the angels are not in charge of it, and that the body can be disowned.

There is nothing so good and lovely as when man and wife in their home dwell together in unity of mind and disposition.’

I have come to the conclusion that death is not an enemy but a brother. Death is a beautiful naked man who looks like Apollo, and he is not satisfied with those who wither away in old age. Death is a perfectionist, he likes the young and beautiful, he wants to stroke our hair and caress the sinew that binds our muscle to the bone. He does all he can to meet us, our faces gladden his heart, and he stands in our path to challenge us because he likes a clean fair fight, and after the fight he likes to befriend us, clap us on the shoulder, and make us laugh at all the pettiness and folly of the living. At the conclusion of a battle he wanders amongst the dead, raising them up, placing laurels upon the brows of those most comely, and he gathers them together as his own children and takes them away to drink wine that tastes of honey and gives them the sense of proportion that they never had in life.

coming home is like iced water after a day at sea in August when there has been no wind.

‘It teaches us that to be associated with the British is to be offered the choice of one of two bags tied at the neck with string. One contains a viper, and the other a bag of gold. If you are lucky, you will choose the bag of gold, only to find that the British have reserved the right to exchange it for the other without notice. Conversely, ill luck might cause you to pick the bag with the viper, whereupon the British will wait until you have been bitten, and then say, “We didn’t mean it; have this other bag.”

I am content to die in the hope that, as Plato says, death might be “… a change, a migration of the soul from one place to another”.

Symmetry is only a property of dead things. Did you ever see a tree or a mountain that was symmetrical? It’s fine for buildings, but if you ever see a symmetrical human face, you will have the impression that you ought to think it beautiful, but that in fact you find it cold. The human heart likes a little disorder in its geometry, Kyria Pelagia. Look at your face in a mirror, Signorina, and you will see that one eyebrow is a little higher than the other, that the set of the lid of your left eye is such that the eye is a fraction more open than the other. It is these things that make you both attractive and beautiful, whereas … otherwise you would be a statue. Symmetry is for God, not for us.’

Transfixed by this, she realised suddenly that there was something about music that had never been revealed to her before: it was not merely the production of sweet sound; it was, to those who understood it, an emotional and intellectual odyssey.

They became lovers in the old-fashioned sense, and made love in the old-fashioned sense. Their idea of making love was to kiss in the dark under the olive tree after curfew, or sit on a rock watching for dolphins through his binoculars.

‘Love is a kind of dementia with very precise and oft-repeated clinical symptoms. You blush in each other’s presence, you both hover in places where you expect the other to pass, you are both a little tongue-tied, you both laugh inexplicably and too long, you become quite nauseatingly girlish, and he becomes quite ridiculously gallant.

Love is a temporary madness, it erupts like volcanoes and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have so entwined

Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident. Your mother and I had it, we had roots that grew towards each other underground, and when all the pretty blossom had fallen from our branches we found that we were one tree and not two.

you know as well as I do that love delayed is lust augmented.

‘Look, I’ve been all over the world. I’ve seen Santiago de Chile, Shanghai, Stockholm, Addis Ababa, Sydney, all of them. And all the time I’ve been learning to be a doctor, and I can tell you that no one is more truly themselves than when they are sick or injured. That’s when the qualities come out.

‘When loved ones die, you have to live on their behalf. See things as though with their eyes. Remember how they used to say things, and use those words oneself. Be thankful that you can do things that they cannot, and also feel the sadness of it.

you are yourself alone, but nonetheless, you are as I made you.

It is said that in ancient times all lands were one, and it seems that the continents themselves profess nostalgia for that state of affairs, just as there are people who say that they belong not to their nation but to the world, demanding an international passport and a universal right of residence. Thus India pushes northwards, ploughing up the Himalayas, determined not to be an island but to press its tropical and humid lust on Asia. The Arabian peninsula wreaks a sly revenge on the Ottomans by leaning against Turkey casually in the hope of causing it to fall into the Black Sea. Africa, tired of white folk who think of it as musky, perilous, unknowable and romantic, squeezes northward in the determination that Europe shall look it in the face for once, and admit after all that its civilisation was conceived in Egypt. Only the Americas hurry away westwards, so determined to be isolated and superior that they have forgotten that the world is round and that one day perforce they will find themselves glued prodigiously to China.