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.

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

Life is full of alternatives but no choice.

To understand the stars would spoil their appearance.

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.

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.

There's nothing so inhuman as a human being

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