Likings arise when one has no earthly reason for liking - the most wildly improbable marriages and uncommon friendship.
- Patrick O'Brian
Friendship, Reason, Arise, Earthly
I have 60 years of reading to draw upon: naval memoirs, dispatches, the Naval Chronicles, family letters.
- Patrick O'Brian
Reading, Memoirs, Draw, Naval
Since I grew up, I have never deliberately used any technique at all other than the physical shaping of my tale so that it more or less resembles what has been thought of as a novel for these last two hundred years.
- Patrick O'Brian
Other, Been, Hundred, Hundred Years
Take a newspaper account of Waterloo or Trafalgar, with all the small advertisements: it seems much more real than reading about it in a history book.
- Patrick O'Brian
Small, Newspaper, More, Waterloo
My wife and I have spent most of our lives in France, and we are both pretty well bilingual, my wife more purely than I, since as a little girl she went to school in French Switzerland.
- Patrick O'Brian
Purely, Our, Little Girl, Bilingual
When you're taking a fence on a horse, you don't think much; your body does all the thinking, and you're over or you're not over. It's much the same when you are doing a tricky thing with a pen. There are times when I'm writing very, very fast.
- Patrick O'Brian
Doing, Very, Your, Fence
The first interviews I gave were entirely unpleasant. You have people trying to trip you up with impolite questions that have nothing to do with the books. It's simply vulgar curiosity, and I won't have it.
- Patrick O'Brian
Curiosity, Unpleasant, Entirely
A freewheeling mind can conceive a virtually infinite number of sequences, but just how that mind picks out and stores those that may perhaps be used later to deal with a given tension, a given situation, is far beyond my understanding.
- Patrick O'Brian
Deal, Used, Infinite, Conceive
On a ship, everything is enclosed: the people are right on top of each other and can't get up and walk away.
- Patrick O'Brian
Ship, Other, Away, Enclosed
In my case, I write in the past because I'm not really part of the present. I have nothing valid to say about anything current, though I have something to say about what existed then.
- Patrick O'Brian
In The Past, I Write, Though, Current
I have never written for an audience. On the other hand I do not write merely to please myself.
- Patrick O'Brian
Never, Audience, Other, Merely
I very much dislike being interviewed by the kind of journalist who tries to dig into your private life.
- Patrick O'Brian
Private, Very, Tries, Private Life
About my books, that's all that I think the public has, in its normal way, to know. My private life is, by definition, private.
- Patrick O'Brian
Think, Normal, Private, Private Life
In a day when, if you insulted a man it might cost you your life, you were probably more civil.
- Patrick O'Brian
More, Cost, Might, Insulted
The function of the novel is the exploration of the human condition. Really, that's what it's all about.
- Patrick O'Brian
Exploration, Condition, Human Condition
I've never set out to seduce my reader. I don't see him at all clearly.
- Patrick O'Brian
Clearly, Set, Reader, Seduce
You can't be happy if you're not tolerably happy with yourself. The addition of friends adds immeasurably to life.
- Patrick O'Brian
Happy, Yourself, Be Happy, Adds
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