Brazzaville Beach Quotes

“The last thing we learn about ourselves is our effect.”
― William Boyd, Brazzaville Beach

“What can I know? Nothing for sure. What ought I to do? Try not to hurt anyone. What may I hope for? For the best (but it won’t make any difference).”
― William Boyd, Brazzaville Beach

“I have teken refuge in the doctrine that advises one not to seek tranquility in certainty but in permanently suspended judgement.”
― William Boyd, Brazzaville Beach

“What cannot be avoided, must be welcomed.”
― William Boyd, Brazzaville Beach

“Take a look at anyone’s life. Take a look at your own. In the long fold catastrophe that makes up your three-score years and ten you will encounter many cusp catastrophes along the way.”
― William Boyd, Brazzaville Beach

“She was happy. Her father had always told her to make sure and recognise that state when it arrived, and acknowledge it. 'It's like money in the bank, old girl', he would say ...”
― William Boyd, Brazzaville Beach

“She felt weary and careworn, in the way one often does before the big job of work is tackled; that sense of premature or projected exhaustion that is the breeding ground of all procrastination.”
― William Boyd, Brazzaville Beach

“a morose memory of former glories. I saw Usman standing waist-high”
― William Boyd, Brazzaville Beach

“It’s a saying. What we always say. A warning: ‘Never be too happy.”
― William Boyd, Brazzaville Beach

“appellation”
― William Boyd, Brazzaville Beach

“I looked at him as if I hadn’t seen him for years. The sherry color of his brown eyes”
― William Boyd, Brazzaville Beach

“Reasonable behavior was the last thing you wanted. You felt as if the resolution of human problems demanded passion and brute unreason, some spitting and shouting. This absence of recrimination, of accusation and counter-accusation, the lack of long-term unspoken resentments and grudges suddenly unearthed and exposed in the heat of argument, disturbed her.”
― William Boyd, Brazzaville Beach

“I stopped and filled my lungs, smelling Africa - smelling dust, woodsmoke, a perfume from a flower, something musty, something decaying.”
― William Boyd, Brazzaville Beach

“There was something facile and shallow about male beauty, she thought.”
― William Boyd, Brazzaville Beach

“I should learn to be more craftily evasive, I thought: a bad evasion is tantamount to telling the truth.”
― William Boyd, Brazzaville Beach

“All the itch and clutter of the world, its bother and fuss, its nagging pettiness, can wear you down so easily. And this is why I like the beach ...”
― William Boyd, Brazzaville Beach