Home
Authors
Tags
App
Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App
" New York was very congenial to me when I was young, like most people. I met my comrades in arms and partied hard. It's the way it should be, and then you get sick of it. "
Lawrence Osborne
Young
People
Me
Related Quotes:
" So many writers live their whole lives in rooms. You can be too civilised in the environment you have around you, too oriented towards speaking engagements and literary festivals and dinner parties. That has no interest for me these days. You get to a point where you don't care anymore. At that point, you can start to write. "
Lawrence Osborne
You
Start
Me
" The best times to visit the Gobi and Three Camel Lodge are June, and September through October. By the beginning of November, it is ferociously cold, while October can swing surreally between warm days and clear, chilly nights and frosty mornings dusted with snow - perfect. "
Lawrence Osborne
Snow
Beginning
Best
" The English are very indulgent to episodes of alcoholic insanity. "
Lawrence Osborne
Insanity
Very
English
" There's a distinct unease about Americans when they are outside the United States. I can't say quite what it is, but they are easily spooked or driven to cynicism - the country is diverse but, paradoxically, extremely insular. "
Lawrence Osborne
Country
Driven
Outside
" There's something attractive about making people temporarily forget their actual age by taking them out of their normal lives so completely. Doesn't travel, by its very nature, strive to do this? "
Lawrence Osborne
Forget
Age
Nature
" Many travelers get into trouble in places like Dubai by assuming that it is sufficiently Western for them to drink as they do back home. But elsewhere in the Muslim world, it is quite controlled, and the non-Muslim will be steered down a fairly narrow path. "
Lawrence Osborne
Trouble
Path
World
" Military history is essential to understanding any history and, moreover, is a terrifying and sobering study in the realities of human nature - for yes, to me, such a thing exists, and history indeed proves it. "
Lawrence Osborne
History
Human Nature
Me
" At the end of the 18th century, a young British explorer named George Bogle became one of the first Westerners to penetrate the mysterious and reclusive realm of Druk Yul, or 'Dragon Land.' "
Lawrence Osborne
Young
Mysterious
Land
" I left New York after my mother died and, rather aimlessly, had settled in Istanbul for a change of scene. It was a rather dramatic gesture on my part, since I'd lived in New York for 20 years, but I felt I needed something different - the escalating expense and pressure of New York had begun to weary me. "
Lawrence Osborne
Change
Me
Mother
" I have found that whiskey is enjoyed as a refined secret pleasure in many cities - and it appears to be popular in Pakistan, as it is all over the tropical Asian world, Muslim or non-Muslim. "
Lawrence Osborne
Pleasure
Secret
World
" Arak means 'sweat' in Arabic, and it is the perfect Mediterranean after-dinner drink, in my opinion. "
Lawrence Osborne
Opinion
Drink
Perfect
" One of the reasons I like living in Bangkok is that, although it's a megacity, it's very saturated with nature - the vast and brooding skies, the sudden storms and rains, the vegetation and even the animals that abound. "
Lawrence Osborne
Nature
Animals
Living
" That's all you do in life: you find your perch, and if it suits you, just carry on. There's nothing Graham Greene about it. "
Lawrence Osborne
Carry
You
Suits
" In Bangkok's budding literary scene, Prabda Yoon sits at the centre. "
Lawrence Osborne
Literary
Scene
Centre
" I've got everything against likable characters. Likable characters are usually completely forgettable, and we don't really care. I think we love villains... precisely because they show us these disturbing complexities that I don't think nice characters do. "
Lawrence Osborne
Us
Think
Nice
" Sometimes you can publish a first novel in a kind of lyrical flourish, but it is not really a lyrical form. The beautiful truths about the world are more hard won than that. Novels should be bleach boned. It's a question of cumulative observation and lived suffering. It takes time. "
Lawrence Osborne
You
Beautiful
Suffering
" The orchid's association in Chinese culture with such virtues as elegance, good taste, friendship, and fertility goes all the way back to Confucius himself, who was said to have a particular attachment to the flowers. "
Lawrence Osborne
Flowers
Good
Friendship
" I grew up in the small town of Haywards Heath, south of London. "
Lawrence Osborne
Small
Town
Small Town
" I still miss qualities of Khmer life that are hard to quantify: the slow, sensual pace, the hovering presence of the past, the vast skies filled with terrifying and beautiful butts. And, of course, the food. "
Lawrence Osborne
Life
Past
Beautiful
" My parents were bookish, very musical, but otherwise uninvolved in the arts or the academic world. "
Lawrence Osborne
Academic
World
Very
" I suppose I reached the limit of what I could do with nonfiction books, perhaps because they never felt quite intense enough - it's a journalistic enterprise, ultimately, even if you are using the memoir as a form. "
Lawrence Osborne
You
Memoir
Never
" I spent a fair amount of time in Communist Poland when I was young - my wife was from there - and I had the impression that boredom was one of the things that was undermining that whole society from the inside. "
Lawrence Osborne
Time
Boredom
Society
" Mongolians are epic drinkers and carousers, and in this respect, they are extremely congenial to my own way of thinking. "
Lawrence Osborne
Way
Own
Thinking
" My parents were decent, aspirant first-generation middle class. They read 'Reader's Digest', listened to classical music; my grandparents had a bust of Stalin on the mantelpiece. The kids of that generation were terrified of being below par, class-wise. "
Lawrence Osborne
Music
Parents
Grandparents
" Shoes tell you a lot about someone. Think of 'Strangers on a Train.' The first thing we see are Bruno's shoes. We know right away that something is up. "
Lawrence Osborne
Train
You
Shoes
" The drinker is a Dionysiac, a dancer who sits still, a mocker. He doesn't need your seriousness or your regard. He just needs a little quiet music and a gentle freedom from priests. "
Lawrence Osborne
Gentle
Quiet
Need
" I made the decision that I didn't want to spend my life in rooms and write about rooms, or else make books that are researched constructs. I think you do have to get out there and live it. Thriller and genre writers seem to understand this. "
Lawrence Osborne
My Life
Life
Decision
" To me, the contemporary novel suffers from a lack of sense of place - or spirit of place, if you will. It's not important to most writers, I must assume, or they try to research a given background on sabbatical. Not for me. I write about places I've lived long before I ever set pen to paper. "
Lawrence Osborne
Place
Research
Pen
" I'll wager there isn't a human being on earth who doesn't believe in luck, however rational they pretend to be in public life. In reality, most of human life is luck - and, of course, its darker, more prevalent opposite. One only has to live long enough to experience both. "
Lawrence Osborne
Life
Reality
Experience
" I've spent most of my adult life in the United States, and there the celebrity culture has been entrenched for a long time. It has made people almost literally insane, even those who make a great show of repudiating it. Those people, like novelists, who can no longer enjoy this status are condemned to despise it. "
Lawrence Osborne
People
Long
Culture