“Love is the extremely difficult realization that something other than oneself is real.”
“Emotions really exist at the bottom of the personality or at the top. In the middle they are acted. this is why all the world is a stage.”
“I think being a woman is like being Irish... Everyone says you're important and nice, but you take second place all the time.”
“People from a planet without flowers would think we must be mad with joy the whole time to have such things about us.”
"The company which I need is the company which a pub or a café will provide. I have never wanted a communion of souls. It's already hard enough to tell the truth to oneself.”
Under the Net
“One of the secrets of a happy life is continuous small treats.”
“One should go easy on smashing other people's lies. Better to concentrate on one's own.”
Henry and Cato
“Of course reading and thinking are important but, my God, food is important too.”
The Sea, the Sea
My favorite bit from Under the Net is when he sees that the presumably mediocre French author he has been translating has just won the Prix Goncourt, and feels as a man might feel when his favorite opinion is refuted conclusively and in detail by a chimpanzee.
ReplyDeleteI met her once, in 1978, and thought it well to read Under the Net.
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