Lawrence Durrell said this quote

You see, nothing matters except pleasure - which is the opposite of happiness, its tragic part, I expect.

~ Lawrence Durrell

The steward, according to custom, had stopped all the clocks. This, in the language of Narouz, 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 politenesses filled Nessim with emotion.

~ 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

Underneath an artist's preoccupations with sex, society, religion, etc. (all the staple abstractions that allow the forebrain to chatter) there is a soul tortured beyond endurance by the lack of tenderness in the world.

~ Lawrence Durrell