Patrick White Quotes

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. ~ Patrick White

She had begun to read in the beginning as a protection from the frightening and unpleasant things. She continued because, apart from the story, literature brought with it a kind of gentility for which she craved. ~ Patrick White

But achievements differ in different men. It is not for me, unfortunately so, to build a solid house and live in it the kind of life that is lived in such houses. That is why' - and he began guzzling his wine - 'it is disturbing,' he said. 'Honest people can destroy most effectually such foundations as some of us have. ~ Patrick White

Poetry resists academic pretension, just as the mystery of religious faith evaporates on contact with dogma. ~ Patrick White

In fact I enjoyed every minute of my life at King's, especially the discovery of French and German literature. ~ Patrick White

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

Where have you been, Theodora?," Mrs Goodman asked.
"Walking, Mother."
"And whom did you see?"
Mrs Goodman flung her grammar like a stone.
"I did not see a cat," said Theodora.
Mrs Goodman looked at her daughter, who giggled before she left the room. ~ Patrick White

Human behavior is a series of lunges, of which, it is sometimes sensed, the direction is inevitable. ~ Patrick White

I would like to believe in the myth that we grow wiser with age. In a sense my disbelief is wisdom. Those of a middle generation, if charitable or sentimental, subscribe to the wisdom myth, while the callous see us as dispensable objects, like broken furniture or dead flowers. For the young we scarcely exist unless we are unavoidable members of the same family, farting, slobbering, perpetually mislaying teeth and bifocals. ~ Patrick White

Life doesn't end on the kitchen floor while there is the will to dance. ~ Patrick White

But the boy was not cheated by her ignorance. He was not intensely interested in answers, the things themselves were enough. So he ran on, holding the leaf by its twig, or feather by its quill, and whereas his mother thought mostly of arriving, discovery kept him in a state of endless being. ~ Patrick White

To kiss and to kill are similar words to eyes that focus with difficulty. ~ Patrick White

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. ~ Patrick White

Human relationships are vast as deserts: they demand all daring, she seemed to suggest. ~ Patrick White

The mystery of life is not salved by success, which is an end in itself, but in failure, in perpetual struggle, in becoming. ~ Patrick White

It was Sunday, and Mumma had gone next door with Lena and the little ones. Under the pepper tree in the yard Pa was sorting, counting, the empty bottles he would sell back: the bottles going clink clink as Pa stuck them in the sack. The fowls were fluffing in the dust and sun: that crook-neck white pullet Mumma said she would hit on the head if only she had the courage to; but she hadn't. ~ Patrick White

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. ~ Patrick White

I developed the habit of writing novels behind a closed door, or at my uncle's, on the dining table. ~ Patrick White

Superficially my war was a comfortable exercise in futility carried out in a grand Scottish hotel amongst the bridge players and swillers of easy-come-by whisky. My chest got me out of active service and into guilt, as I wrote two, or is it three of the novels for which I am now acclaimed. ~ Patrick White

The map? I will first make it. ~ Patrick White

Such was the texture of her marble.
[In a description of Laura Trevelyan.] ~ Patrick White

The worst thing about love between human beings is that when you are prepared to love them they don't want it; when they do its you who can't bear the idea. ~ Patrick White

Reason finally holds a gun at its head - and does not always miss. ~ Patrick White

As it is I'm a dated novelist, whom hardly anybody reads, or if they do, most of them don't understand what I am on about. Certainly I wish I had never written Voss, which is going to be everybody's albatross. ~ Patrick White

So that, in the end, there was no end. ~ Patrick White

I continued writing the bad plays which fortunately nobody would produce, just as no one did me the unkindness of publishing my early novels. ~ Patrick White

But re-reading Voss also demonstrates again that although White wasn't 'a nice man', and indeed was - perhaps rightly - scathingly dismissive of my and other Australian writers' work and origins unless they were his friends, he was a genius, and Voss one of the finest works of the modernist era and of the past century. ~ Thomas Keneally

The bestseller charts, a sure indicator of public taste, tell us with relentless frequency that Marian Keyes or Jeffrey Archer is a better author, by some dizzying six-figure sum, both in numbers of copies and money, than, say, J. M. Coetzee or Patrick White. Are they right? ~ Neel Mukherjee

They walked on rather aimlessly. He hoped she wouldn't notice he was touched, because he wouldn't have known how to explain why. Here lay the great discrepancy between aesthetic truth and sleazy reality. ~ Patrick White

He himself, he realized, had always been most abominably frightened, even at the height of his divine power, a frail god upon a rickety throne, afraid of opening letters, of making decisions, afraid of the instinctive knowledge in the eyes of mules, of the innocent eyes of good men, of the elastic nature of the passions, even of the devotion he had received from some men, and one woman, and dogs. ~ Patrick White

She would have liked to love. It was terrible to think she had never loved her son as a man. Sometimes her hands would wrestle together. They were supple, rather plump hands, broad and not yet dry. But wrestling like this together, they were papery and dried-up. Then she would force herself into some deliberate activity or speak tenderly to her good husband, offering him things to eat, and seeing to his clothes. She loved her husband. Even after the drudgery of love she could still love him. But sometimes she lay on her side and said, I have not loved him enough, not yet, he has not seen the evidence of love. It would have been simpler if she had been able to turn and point to the man their son, but she could not. ~ Patrick White

I think it is impossible to explain faith. It is like trying to explain air, which one cannot do by dividing it into its component parts and labeling them scientifically. It must be breathed to be understood. ~ Patrick White

Two people do not lose themselves at the identical moment, or else they might find each other, and be saved. It is not as simple as that. ~ Patrick White

Life is full of alternatives but no choice. ~ Patrick White

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

There are moments when the eyes flow into each other. Then the souls are wrapped around each other across a distance ~ Patrick White

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

I also know Patrick White in Australia, both personally and as a writer, and Salman Rushdie in India. ~ William Golding

To make yourself, it is also necessary to destroy yourself. ~ Patrick White

Her eyes heated with the anger and hurt that had been held inside her
for too long. "Your trips to the village have not gone unnoticed."
A look of confusion crossed his too-handsome face. "What does my
going to the village have to do with us?"
"I know there are women
"
He swore and gripped her arm, jerked her up against his chest. "Who
put such nonsense in your head?"
She didn't say anything, her throat hot and tight from the ball of tears
constricting it.
"Finlay," he said flatly. She looked at him in surprise. " 'Tis no secret
that he despises me, but I am surprised that you listened to his venom."
"It's not too difficult to believe. You are a man."
"Aye," he said softly. "But I've not had another woman, Elizabeth."
Her heart faltered. Her eyes shot to his, not daring to believe ... He
cradled her cheek tenderly in his big hand.
"How can I when I want someone else?"
He hasn't been with a woman ... he wants me. ~ Monica McCarty

But historically, "white" is a catchall with one very important, toxic difference, in America especially: We're the good ones. The normal ones. The not yous. Even if we're poor, even if we're servants, even if we have no education, even if we're Jewish, we're the ones you can't enslave. We're the ones you can't beat without repercussion, who get to vote, and are protected by laws no matter what. ~ Phoebe Robinson

We, the people of South Africa, declare for all our country and the world to know:
That South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white, and that no government can justly claim authority unless it is based on the will of the people. ~ Nelson Mandela

Seems once was enough to infect me. From then on you've been lying dormant, like a virus. Or an incurable chronic condition that flares up from time to time.'
A long pause, where life transforms from black-and-white to colour.
'I'm eczema?'
Ben beams. 'Eczema of the heart. That's it. Psoriasis of the soul. ~ Mhairi McFarlane

The fourth estate came together in an unprecedented professional consensus. They chose insulting the other side over trying to understand what motivated them. They transformed opinion writing into a vehicle for high moral boasting. What could possibly have gone wrong with such an approach? [...] Put this question in slightly more general terms and you are confronting the single great mystery of 2016. The American white-collar class just spent the year rallying around a super-competent professional (who really wasn't all that competent) and either insulting or silencing everyone who didn't accept their assessment. And then they lost. Maybe it's time to consider whether there's something about shrill self-righteousness, shouted from a position of high social status, that turns people away. ~ Thomas Frank

I would that we were, my beloved, white birds on the foam of the sea!
We tire of the flame of the meteor, before it can fadeand flee;
And the flame of the blue star of twilight, hung low on the rim of the sky,
Has awaked in our hearts, my beloved, a sadness that may not die. ~ William Butler Yeats

And yet, or just for this reason, it's so fascinating to be a woman. It's an adventure that takes such courage, a challenge that's never boring. You'll have so many things to engage you if you're born a woman. To begin with, you'll have to struggle to maintain that if God exists he might even be an old woman with white hair or a beautiful girl. Then you'll have to struggle to explain that it wasn't sin that was born on the day when Eve picked an apple, what was born that day was a splendid virtue called disobedience. ~ Oriana Fallaci

The Guinness book is a very elitist organization. There's nothing scientific about what they do. They just have an office full of people who decide what is a record and what isn't. ~ Jack White

The huntsman took pity on her and said, Run away into the woods, child, and never come back. ~ Marissa Meyer

If you are representing a white body let it be surrounded by ample space, because as white has no colour of its own, it is tinged and altered in some degree by the colour of the objects surrounding it ~ Leonardo Da Vinci

You've never seen a Columbine done by a black child. Never. They always say, 'We can't believe it happened here. We can't believe it's these suburban white kids.' It's only them! ~ Van Jones

But this isn't their God, she decided. It's my God. This is a God I have found through sacrificing my own life, through my flesh being cut, my skin ripped off, my blood sucked away, my nails torn, all my time and hopes and memories being stolen from me. This is not a God with a form. No white clothes, no long beard. This god has no doctrine, no scripture, no precepts. No reward, no punishment. This God doesn't give, and doesn't take away. There is no heaven up in the sky, no hell down below. When it's hot, and when it's cold, God is simply there. ~ Haruki Murakami

All I know, boy, is that life is, on occasion, entirely too vast for my tastes. ~ Patrick DeWitt

We see differences in people and seem to be afraid of people. The black or white or gay or straight - I don't necessarily look for differences but for similarities. We need to be looking out for each other. ~ James Blunt

brain as a shadow passes away upon a white screen. She lives in the cottage and works for Miss Swaffer. She is Amy Foster for everybody, and the child is 'Amy Foster's boy.' She calls him Johnny - which means Little John. "It is impossible to say whether this name recalls anything to her. Does she ever think of the past? I have seen her hanging over the boy's cot in a ~ Joseph Conrad

Normal is an ideal. But it's not reality. Reality is brutal, it's beautiful, it's every shade between black and white, and it's magical. Yes, magical. Because every now and then, it turns nothing into something. ~ Tara Kelly

There are many famous people who could read extremely fast. It was said that England's Samuel Johnson could read almost as fast as he could look at the pages. While in the White House, President Theodore Roosevelt used to read a book every day before breakfast, and he occasionally read three a day. John F. Kennedy was well known for being able to read 1,200 words per minute. ~ Peter Kump

The problem is that after two centuries of conflict about just who was wanted in the Australian nation the term 'Australia' both includes and excludes. There are still people for whom 'Australian' means predominatly Anglo-Celtic white people whose parents were born here before 'New Australians' came as migrants after the Second World War. A common alternative to 'white people' (who from an Aboriginal perspective might be more genially called 'whitefellas') is 'Europeans'. This makes an incongruous appeal to history. Politically the colonisers were British, but they includes people of many nationalities. It's an odd usage, as when you see a sign in a national park telling you 'Europeans' brought the invasive weeds and pests. They brought the sign and the concept of a park too, and 'they', in a complex sense, are 'us'. ~ Nicholas Jose

I decided to dub the room with the good chairs my lutery. Or perhaps my performatory. I would need a while to come up with something suitably pretentious. ~ Patrick Rothfuss

Actual class struggles apart, one of the aesthetic ways you could prove that there was a class system in America was by cogitating on the word, or acronym, 'WASP.' First minted by E. Digby Baltzell in his book The Protestant Establishment, the term stood for 'White Anglo-Saxon Protestant.' Except that, as I never grew tired of pointing out, the 'W' was something of a redundancy (there being by definition no BASPs or JASPs for anyone to be confused with, or confused about). 'ASP,' on the other hand, lacked some of the all-important tone. There being so relatively few Anglo-Saxon Catholics in the United States, the 'S' [sic] was arguably surplus to requirements as well. But then the acronym AS would scarcely do, either. And it would raise an additional difficulty. If 'Anglo-Saxon' descent was the qualifying thing, which surely it was, then why were George Wallace and Jerry Falwell not WASPs? After all, they were not merely white and Anglo-Saxon and Protestant, but very emphatic about all three things. Whereas a man like William F. Buckley, say, despite being a white Irish Catholic, radiated the very sort of demeanor for which the word WASP had been coined to begin with. So, for the matter of that, did the dapper gentleman from Richmond, Virginia, Tom Wolfe. Could it be, then, that WASP was really a term of class rather than ethnicity? Q.E.D. ~ Christopher Hitchens

No one asks to be born, to be black or white or any color in between and yet the identity a person is born into becomes the hardest to explain to the world ~ A. Igoni Barrett

People read inevitability as entitlement, and the American people want their candidates to sweat for the job. They want them to actually make a case for the job. ~ Deval Patrick

To Harry James Potter,'" he read, and Harry's insides contracted with a sudden excitement, "'I leave the Snitch he caught in his first Quidditch match at Hogwarts, as a reminder of the rewards of perseverance and skill.'"
As Scrimgeour pulled out the tiny, walnut-sized golden ball, its silver wings fluttered rather feebly, and Harry could not help feeling a definite sense of anticlimax.
"Why did Dumbledore leave you this Snitch?" asked Scrimgeour.
"No idea," said Harry. "For the reasons you just read out, I supposed . . . to remind me what you can get if you . . . persevere and whatever it was."
"You think this a mere symbolic keepsake, then?"
"I suppose so," said Harry. "What else could it be?"
"I'm asking the questions," said Scrimgeour, shifting his chair a little closer to the sofa. Dusk was really falling outside now; the marquee beyond the windows towered ghostly white over the hedge.
"I notice that your birthday cake is in the shape of a Snitch," Scrimgeour said to Harry. "Why is that?"
Hermione laughed derisively.
"Oh, it can't be a reference to the fact Harry's a great Seeker, that's way too obvious," she said. "There must be a secret message from Dumbledore hidden in the icing!"
"I don't think there's anything hidden in the icing," said Scrimgeour, "but a Snitch would be a very good hiding place for a small object. You know why, I'm sure?"
Harry shrugged. Hermione, however, answered: Harry thought that answering ~ J.K. Rowling

Human beings are not black and white. ~ Hugh Panaro

It's my belief that you should never show your work to anyone in the publishing world until it shines like a diamond. Rough drafts don't shine, as a rule. Mine certainly didn't. That's why I was rejected for years and years. ~ Patrick Rothfuss

Then set out after repeated warning the grizzly
Afghan Duryodhan
in blazing sun
removed sandal-wood blooded stone-attired guards
spearing gloom brought out a substitute of dawn
crude hell's profuse experience
Huh
a night-waken drug addict beside head of feeble earth
from the cruciform The Clapper could not descend due to lockdown
wet-eyed babies were smiling
.
in a bouquet of darkness in forced dreams
The Clapper wept when learnt about red-linen boat's drowned passengers
in famished yellow winter
white lilies bloomed in hot coal tar
when in chiseled breeze
nickel glazed seed-kernel
moss layered skull which had moon on its shoulder scolded whole night
non-weeping male praying mantis in grass
bronze muscled he-men of Barbadoz
pressed their fevered forehead on her furry navel
.
in comb-flowing rain
floated on frowning waves
diesel sheet shadow whipped oceans
all wings had been removed from the sky
funeral procession of newspaperman's freshly printed dawn
lifelong jailed convict's eye in the keyhole
outside
in autumnal rice pounding pink ankle
Lalung ladies ~ Malay Roychoudhury

I can totally identify with the younger kids. I'll never do what Jon Spencer did to me when I was 16, though. I made a tape with my friends and I put it onstage right near his mic stand by the pedal board and he pulled it out with his foot, kicked it to the center of the stage, looked me in the eye and stomped it to pieces. ~ Patrick Carney

People commit suicide through weakness, not through strength. ~ T.H. White

Science is nothing more than a method of inquiry. The method says an assertion is valid, and merits universal acceptance, only if it can be independently verified. The impersonal rigor of the method means it is utterly apolitical. A truth in science is verifiable whether you are black or white, male or female, old or young. It's verifiable whether you like the results of a study, or you don't. ~ Michael Crichton

Polaris often remarks to Sol that Sirius loses his temper much less often these days. But the one sure way to send him into a flaming rage is to suggest that he finds a new Companion. Sirius will not hear of it. The small white sphere circling his goes untenanted, because he hopes that what Miss Smith said is true. ~ Diana Wynne Jones