Sweet Caress Quotes

“However long your stay on this small planet lasts, and whatever happens during it, the most important thing is that-from time to time-you feel life's sweet caress.”
― William Boyd, Sweet Caress: The Many Lives of Amory Clay

“Everything in life is a bit odd, when you come to think of it.”
― William Boyd, Sweet Caress: The Many Lives of Amory Clay

“any man over forty who deliberately combs his hair forward in a child’s fringe has something suspect about him,”
― William Boyd, Sweet Caress

“So I found myself asking the question: what is the opposite of a mistake? And I realised there wasn’t a word, in fact, precisely because a mistake always arises from best intentions that go awry. You can’t set out to make a mistake. Mistakes happen – there’s nothing we can do about them.”
― William Boyd, Sweet Caress

“...I watched the day slip into night, noting the wondrous tonal transformations of the sunset on its dimmer switch, how blood-orange can shade imperceptibly into ice-blue on the knife-edge of the horizon, listening to the sea's interminable call for silence - shh, shh, shh.”
― William Boyd, Sweet Caress: The Many Lives of Amory Clay

“We don’t sense mistakes coming, there’s this crucial unforeseen factor to them. So I found myself asking the question: what is the opposite of a mistake? And I realised there wasn’t a word, in fact, precisely because a mistake always arises from best intentions that go awry. You can’t set out to make a mistake. Mistakes happen – there’s nothing we can do about them.”
― William Boyd, Sweet Caress: The Many Lives of Amory Clay

“Ma non è forse così che va la vita, nella maggior parte dei casi? Si rifiuta di adeguarsi ai nostri bisogni, alle esigenze narrative che riteniamo essenziali per dare un senso al tempo che trascorriamo su questa Terra.”
― William Boyd, Una dolce carezza

“Greville swore all the time in private, arguing that we owed it to the English language to exploit the full range of forceful expressions it offered.”
― William Boyd, Sweet Caress

“Wouldn’t it be wiser to experience the day ahead and savour it, as if it were my last, and postpone for a while my appointment with my pills and my whisky until the moment comes when I don’t feel like coping any more and all anticipation has gone?”
― William Boyd, Sweet Caress

“We all see the world differently from each other; we all have unique vision.”
― William Boyd, Sweet Caress

“WAR IS GOOD BUSINESS INVEST YOUR SON’;”
― William Boyd, Sweet Caress

“we think we understand all about the human body but actually we know very little.”
― William Boyd, Sweet Caress

“It’s funny how, sometimes, one can be so convinced, so utterly certain, about something as entirely fickle as strong emotion”
― William Boyd, Sweet Caress

“There were three PROs looking after us – a measure of how the army and the mass media were now coexisting and being mutually supportive.”
― William Boyd, Sweet Caress

“Charbonneau was an interesting, amusing and provocative man and I like to think he brought out the best in me, also. Even two minutes in his company provided some comment or observation that would make me laugh or make me violently disagree with him and so those two minutes of my day were well spent as a consequence.”
― William Boyd, Sweet Caress

“the key factor in our mutual pleasure was that we enjoyed each other’s company, which, banal though it may seem, is the fundamental explanation of any successful and enduring union.”
― William Boyd, Sweet Caress

“I may be a shit writer,’ I remember him saying once, ‘but I’m richer than any of the good ones.”
― William Boyd, Sweet Caress

“what is the opposite of a mistake? And I realised there wasn’t a word, in fact, precisely because a mistake always arises from best intentions that go awry. You can’t set out to make a mistake. Mistakes happen – there’s nothing we can do about them.”
― William Boyd, Sweet Caress

“I don’t have many photographs of myself – a trait common to most professional photographers”
― William Boyd, Sweet Caress

“It amazes me what compromises we happily live with. We limp along, patching up, improvising.”
― William Boyd, Sweet Caress

“and thin, with the slight stoop”
― William Boyd, Sweet Caress: The Many Lives of Amory Clay

“Dido-my solitary bridesmaid- hadn't yet married Reggie Southover, and she didn't bring him to the wedding. For the first time, I thought she was jealous of me.

'My, my, Lady Farr,' she said, checking the hang of my wedding dress. 'Do I have to curtsey?'

'Only on my birthday. And you can always call me Amory when we're alone.'

'Fuck off!”
― William Boyd, Sweet Caress: The Many Lives of Amory Clay

“Time is a racehorse, eating up the furlongs as it gallops towards the finish line. Look away for a moment, be preoccupied for a moment, and then imagine what has passed you by.”
― William Boyd, Sweet Caress: The Many Lives of Amory Clay

“I thought about the times we'd had in his small garret above Greville's darkroom. And I didn't feel anything. It's strange how strong emotions can be so easily diminished as your life continues; how deepest intimacies become commonplace half-recalled memories-- such as an exotic holiday you once went on, or a cocktail party where you drank far too much, or winning a race at the school sports day. Nothing stirs anymore.”
― William Boyd, Sweet Caress: The Many Lives of Amory Clay

“But you have to admit there are great photographs,' I said.

'All right..There are memorable photographs. Remarkable photographs.'

'So, what makes them memorable or remarkable? What criteria do you use to judge them? To make that decision?'

'I don't think about it. I just know. Instinct.'

'Then maybe you should think about it. You judge a great photo in the same way you judge a great painting or a film or a play or a statue. It's art mon ami ”
― William Boyd, Sweet Caress: The Many Lives of Amory Clay

“I'd been in New York for nearly eighteen months, now - though I still felt a transient, passing through, and that this apartment, this address, my job and my salary were very temporary aspects of my autobiography and whatever significance this sojourn would have in any retrospective view was impossible to discern.”
― William Boyd, Sweet Caress: The Many Lives of Amory Clay

“All family histories, personal histories,are as sketchy and unreliable as histories of the Phoenicians, it seems to me. We should note everything down, fill in the wide gaps if we can. Which is why I am writing this my darlings. ”
― William Boyd, Sweet Caress: The Many Lives of Amory Clay

“I would catch them fast, eternally, thanks to the properties of my wonderful machine. In my hands I had the power to stop time,or so I fancied.”
― William Boyd, Sweet Caress: The Many Lives of Amory Clay

“What drew me down there, I wonder, to the edge of the garden? I remember the summer light--the trees, the bushes,the grass luminously green, basted by the bland, benevolent late-afternoon sun. Was it the light? But there was the laughter, also, coming from where a group of people had gathered by the pond. Someone must have been horsing around making everyone else laugh. The light and laughter, then. ”
― William Boyd, Sweet Caress: The Many Lives of Amory Clay

“Thousands of German prisoners were being shepherded back to holding pens and it was both striking and disturbing to see how young they were – teenagers in the main, wispy adolescent fuzz on their chins and cheeks, all in uniforms that seemed far too large for them, borrowed from men.”
― William Boyd, Sweet Caress