William Boyd
William Boyd
William Boyd, CBEis a British novelist and screenwriter...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth7 March 1952
interesting way television
In some ways, you could argue, television is doing far more interesting work than the movies. It's more fulfilling.
rejection tolerate humankind
Humankind can tolerate only so much rejection.
bereavement age unjust
When you experience bereavement at a youngish age, you suddenly realise that life is unjust and unfair, that bad things will happen, and you have to take that on board.
art book writing
Writing a film - more precisely, adapting a book into a film - is basically a relentless series of compromises. The skill, the "art," is to make those compromises both artistically valid and essentially your own. . . . It has been said before but is worth reiterating: writing a novel is like swimming in the sea; writing a film is like swimming in the bath.
taken family-and-friends world
The only times we are consciously aware of the authorship of a photograph, I would argue, are when we contemplate the photographs we ourselves have taken (or those of friends and family) or when we go deliberately to the photographers monograph or exhibition. The signed image - the appropriated, the owned image - is by far the rarest in this pullulating world of pictures.
common-humanity kitchen spy
I stood there in the kitchen, watching her staring across the meadow still searching for her nemesis and I thought, suddenly, that this is all our lives - this is the one fact that applies to us all, that makes us what we are, our common mortality, our common humanity. One day someone is going to come and take us away: you don't need to have been a spy, I thought, to feel like this.
judgement doctrine tranquility
I have teken refuge in the doctrine that advises one not to seek tranquility in certainty but in permanently suspended judgement.
things-in-life can-do
There are things in life we don't understand, and when we meet them, all we can do is let them alone.
running heart quality
Dignity was the first quality to be abandoned when the heart took over the running of human affairs.
weather people true-life
It's true: lives do drift apart for no obvious reason. We're all busy people,we can't spend our time simply trying to stay in touch. The test of a friendship is if it can weather these inevitable gaps.
ideas facts persons
We never love anyone. Not really. We only love our idea of another person. It is some conception of our own that we love. We love ourselves, in fact.
thinking body instinct
It's amazing how sudden the effect is - it must be the result of a deep atavistic mating urge buried inside us. A glance and you think: 'Yes, this is the one, this one is right for me.' Every instinct in your body seems to sing in unison.
lines nuance film
Film is a medium of clear lines and broad strikes - which can be fantastic - but compared to the subtleties and nuances of a novel, it doesn't even get close.