Patrick White Quotes

Life is full of alternatives but no choice.

If truth is not acceptable, it becomes the imagination of others.

To understand the stars would spoil their appearance.

Because he had nothing to hide, he did perhaps appear to have forfeited a little of his strength. But that is the irony of honesty.

I expect we are all jealous of the women in their past, but how much less exciting if the women had not kept the bed warm.

If I have not lost my mind I can sometimes hear it preparing to defect

She would have liked to sit upon a rock and listen to words, not of any man, but detached, mysterious, poetic words that she alone would interpret through some sense inherited from sleep.

Mrs. Trotter made a sincere though wrong sound, while opening her handbag to look for help.

His legend will be written down, eventually, by those who are troubled by it.

But the purpose and nature are never clearly revealed. Human behaviour is a series of lunges, of which, it is sometimes sensed, the direction is inevitable.

The map? I will first make it.

I am compelled into this country.

And the cavern of fire was enormous, labyrinthine, that received the man. He branched and flamed, glowed and increased, and was suddenly extinguished in the little puffs of smoke and tired thoughts.

In general, ' Voss replied, 'it is necessary to communicate without knowledge of the language.

At times his arrogance did resolve itself into simplicity, though it was difficult, especially for strangers, to distinguish these occasions.

I forget what I was taught. I only remember what I have learnt.