The Intoxicating Mr Lavelle Quotes

“God hates the Devil because he spoke the truth. Man fears the Devil because he means to do him harm. Truth-tellers can be harm-doers too.”
― Neil Blackmore, The Intoxicating Mr Lavelle

“There is very little acceptance in the worlds, least of all in love.”
― Neil Blackmore, The Intoxicating Mr Lavelle

“Our room might look as it had before we left, but it is grief's nature to change how everything feels whilst leaving every brick, tile, picture, cup in the same position.”
― Neil Blackmore, The Intoxicating Mr Lavelle

“You can't defend the damaged person for ever - eventually, you have to defend yourself.”
― Neil Blackmore, The Intoxicating Mr Lavelle

“I realised then that we are not just our own thoughts. We are made of other people's thoughts about us, too, the ones they share with us, and the ones they don't”
― Neil Blackmore, The Intoxicating Mr Lavelle

“Culture is the product of unhappiness. Authors and artists, they are ambitious. They seek eternity. They seek acclaim. Poets and painters, they might as well be dancing on a stage, like the cheapest sort of singer in a burletta, screaming at the audience to love them.”
― Neil Blackmore, The Intoxicating Mr Lavelle

“Even of we were to agree that these great man of beauty are not actually whores grubbing for money, for acclaim, for the pitter-patter of fools' applause, then consider this. Have you seen the prints of Caravaggio? Or Ribera? Or Rembrandt?'[...] 'Do you think those look like the works of happy people? he asked. I knew that they did not. 'You see, Benjamin? Culture is unhappiness end to end.”
― Neil Blackmore, The Intoxicating Mr Lavelle

“Culture is the product of unhappiness. Authors and artists, they are ambitious. They seek eternity. They seek acclaim. Poets and painters, they might as well be dancing on a stage, like the cheapest sort of singer in a burletta, screaming at the audience to love them.' He burst out laughing, in love with his own joke as he began to screech. "Here's my poem! Love me! Here's my novel! Love me! It's in imabic pentameter! Admire me!”
― Neil Blackmore, The Intoxicating Mr Lavelle

“The world is rotten,' he said to me one day, as we picked apart a stick of olive bread we had bought from a street-hawker. 'Do not pretend it is not. Lover of books, do you think they do not rape their maids? And philosophers, do they not whip their slaves? They are every bit as ugly and nasty as me, but they laurel themselves with illuminate crowns and pronounce: 'oh, high-minded acolytes, do you not admire me?' and don't people rush forwards, bowing and scraping, and muttering, 'oh, yes, great poet, yes!' They claim to deliver freedom, but freedom strictly of their own design. Freedom conditional to rules - especially rules like politeness and fairness and being equal, all those horrors - is no kind of freedom at all. I will take my own freedom, thank you, where I please, and what philosophers offer me in consolation of my sorrow, they can...'He paused, sighed, smiled'...they can stick it up their puckered arses”
― Neil Blackmore, The Intoxicating Mr Lavelle

“Because all a person ever needs to do is to reject. There is no sin, no forgiveness, no denial, no contrition, no priests to tell you what to do, no rules to learn, no teachers, no kings and no queens. If someone gives you a rule, reject it. If someone tells you that you must live this way, or that, reject it. Reject, reject, reject! It's the simplest faith and by far the most satisfying. You just reject, reject, reject!”
― Neil Blackmore, The Intoxicating Mr Lavelle

“Justice' he cries, genuinely outraged. 'Are we not revolutionaries? Who cares who earned what? What do your parents care about fairness? When you father grinds some competitor into the dust, or charges too much for a ticket to New York, does he care about justice? They earned that money for you, in truth, because they love you, or some such nonsense, but they cannot give you conditions from their love, can they? What is the value of a love that comes with a contract?”
― Neil Blackmore, The Intoxicating Mr Lavelle