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Let us define 'man' as a poet perpetually conspiring against himself.

Lawrence Durrell

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Lawrence Durrell
Age: 78 †
Born: 1912
Born: January 1
Died: 1990
Died: November 8
Autobiographer
Biographer
Novelist
Playwright
Poet
Visual Artist
Writer
Jullundur
Men
Conspiring
Perpetually
Define
Poet

More quotes by Lawrence Durrell

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It takes a lot of energy and a lot of neurosis to write a novel. If you were really sensible, you'd do something else.
Lawrence Durrell
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A city becomes a world when one loves one of its inhabitants.
Lawrence Durrell
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I don’t believe one reads to escape reality. A person reads to confirm a reality he knows is there, but which he has not experienced.
Lawrence Durrell
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Guilt always hurries towards its complement, punishment: only there does its satisfaction lie.
Lawrence Durrell
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Life is more complicated than we think, yet far simpler than anyone dares to imagine
Lawrence Durrell
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People only see in us the contemptible skirt-fever which rules our actions but completely miss the beauty-hunger underlying it.
Lawrence Durrell
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No one can go on being a rebel too long without turning into an autocrat.
Lawrence Durrell
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It's unthinkable not to love - you'd have a severe nervous breakdown. Or you'd have to be Philip Larkin.
Lawrence Durrell
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The heaviest impact of the work of art is in the guts. Art does not reason. It manhandles you and changes you.
Lawrence Durrell
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An idea is like a rare bird which cannot be seen. What one sees is the trembling of the branch it has just left.
Lawrence Durrell
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Truth is what most contradicts itself.
Lawrence Durrell
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You see, nothing matters except pleasure - which is the opposite of happiness, its tragic part, I expect.
Lawrence Durrell
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We are all hunting for rational reasons for believing in the absurd.
Lawrence Durrell
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'We live' writes Pursewarden somewhere 'lives based upon selected fictions. Our view of reality is conditioned by our position in space and time — not by our personalities as we like to think. Thus every interpretation oа reality is based upon a unique position. Two paces east or west and the whole picture is changed.
Lawrence Durrell
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Poverty is a great cutter-off and riches a great shutter-off.
Lawrence Durrell
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It’s only with great vulgarity that you can achieve real refinement, only out of bawdry that you can get tenderness.
Lawrence Durrell
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I'm trying to die correctly, but it's very difficult, you know.
Lawrence Durrell
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Truth is a woman. That is why it is enigmatic.
Lawrence Durrell
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I see artists as a great battalion moving through paint, words, music towards cosmological interpretation.
Lawrence Durrell
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A taste older than meat, older than wine. A taste as old as cold water.
Lawrence Durrell