William Boyd: Any Human Heart

All these quotations are by the narrator, Logan Mountstuart.

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Every life is both ordinary and extraordinary – it is the respective proportions of those two categories that make life appear interesting or humdrum.

(p 5) 

I’ve had a quite dull, boring life full of routine. I’ve had a quite variable, unpredictable life full of change. Depends on what parts of it you look on.

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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..

( p 140) 

 

I find it amazing that I still keep in touch, however irregular, with my old college friends, and with Tommy whom I haven’t seen for four years.

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The confirmation of the worst news does, paradoxically, clear the mind: at least the way ahead is obvious and people know what they have to do.

(p 206) 

It felt like that when I was diagnosed with cancer: no more false hopes, just concentrating on what could be done about it.

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Only sporadic bouts of masturbation testify to the fact that the libidinous side of my brain has not shut down entirely. What sick Victorian cleric dubbed the practice self-abuse? Self-help, more like, self-support, self-solace. Auto-eroticism keeps you sane.

( p 284)

In fact, the first OED quotations of the expression in this sense date to the beginning of the 18th century, but Mountstuart’s sentiment is correct. Masturbation does keep you sane (or, at least, saner) when you can’t have the real Mackay.

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Those were the years when I was truly happy. Knowing that is both a blessing and a curse. It’s good to acknowledge that you found true happiness in your life – in that sense your life has not been wasted. But to admit that you will never be happy like that again is hard.

(David, p 395) 

 

Ay, reminiscing about my college days and my years in Scotland can sometimes be bittersweet in the extreme.

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I don’t feel old, although I must confess the signs of ageing are everywhere.

(p 404) 

 

It’s odd how one feels closer to people who are much younger than to one’s coevals, although one has inevitably much more common with the latter . . ..

 

 

 

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