Did you know that childhood is the only time in our lives when insanity is not only permitted to us, but expected?

— Louis de Bernières

Don't give into him at all. Deny yourself. Because then your eyes will not be clouded by a madness that you cannot control, and then you will be able to learn to see him as he is. Do you understand?

— Louis de Bernières

Fascism is fundamentally and at bottom an aesthetic conception, and. . . It is your function as creators of beautiful things to portray with the greatest efficacy the sublime beauty and inevitable reality of the Fascist ideal.

— Louis de Bernières

Love delayed is lust augmented.

— Louis de Bernières

Love is a temporary madness; it erupts like volcanoes and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of eternal passion. That is just being in love, which any fool can do. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident. Those that truly love have roots that grow towards each other underground, and when all the pretty blossoms have fallen from their branches, they find that they are one tree and not two.” ~Louis de Bernieres

— Louis de Bernières

Love is a temporary madness, it erupts like volcanoes and then subsides. And when it subsides, you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion, it is not the desire to mate every second minute of the day, it is not lying awake at night imagining that he is kissing every cranny of your body. No, don't blush, I am telling you some truths. That is just being "in love", which any fool can do. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident.

— Louis de Bernières

Love itself is what is left over when being "in love" has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident.

— Louis de Bernières

Men are sometimes driven by things that to a woman make no sense, but she did know that Carelli had to be with his boys. Honor and common sense; in the light of the other, both of them are ridiculous.

— Louis de Bernières

Mustafa Kamal daily reminds his co-conspirators that the object is not to die for the revolution, but to live for it.

— Louis de Bernières

No man is a man until he has been a soldier.

— Louis de Bernières