Love is poetry plus biology.

— Lawrence Durrell

Music is only love looking for words.

— Lawrence Durrell

Music was invented to confirm human loneliness.

— Lawrence Durrell

Old age is an insult. It's like being smacked.

— Lawrence Durrell

People only see in us the contemptible skirt-fever which rules our actions but completely miss the beauty-hunger underlying it.

— Lawrence Durrell

Poverty is a great cutter-off and riches a great shutter-off.

— Lawrence Durrell

The appalling thing is the degree of charity women are capable of. You see it all the time... love lavished on absolute fools. Love's a charity ward, you know.

— Lawrence Durrell

The desire to be near the beloved object is at first not due to the idea of possessing it, but simply to let the two experiences compare themselves, like reflections in different mirrors... For from here love degenerates into habit, possession, and back to loneliness.

— Lawrence Durrell

The richest love is that which submits to the arbitration of time.

— Lawrence Durrell

The steward, according to custom, had stopped all the clocks. This, in the language of Farouk, said, "Your stay with us is so brief, let us not be reminded of the flight of the hours. God made eternity. Let us escape from the despotism of time altogether." These ancient and hereditary politeness filled Nessie with emotion.

— Lawrence Durrell