A biography for D. H. Lawrencehasn’t been written yet.
“This is the very worst wickedness, that we refuse to acknowledge the passionate evil that is in us. This makes us secret and rotten.”
“The cruelest thing a man can do to a woman is to portray her as perfection.”
“Don't be on the side of the angels, it's too lowering.”
“I shall be glad when you have strangled the invincible respectability that dogs your steps.”
“California is a queer place in a way, it has turned its back on the world, and looks into the void Pacific. It is absolutely selfish, very empty, but not false, and at least, not full of false effort.”
“I can't do with mountains at close quarters - they are always in the way, and they are so stupid, never moving and never doing anything but obtrude themselves.”
“Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically.”
“The essential function of art is moral. But a passionate, implicit morality, not didactic. A morality which changes the blood, rather than the mind.”
“One must learn to love, and go through a good deal of suffering to get to it... and the journey is always towards the other soul.”
“One can no longer live with people: it is too hideous and nauseating. Owners and owned, they are like the two sides of a ghastly disease.”
“Men always do leave off really thinking, when the last bit of wild animal dies in them.”
“Never trust the artist. Trust the tale. The proper function of the critic is to save the tale from the artist who created it.”
“Psychoanalysis is out, under a therapeutic disguise, to do away entirely with the moral faculty in man.”
“I want to live my life so that my nights are not full of regrets.”
“The business of art is to reveal the relation between man and his environment.”
“There is only one thing that a man really wants to do, all his life; and that is, to find his way to his God, his Morning Star, salute his fellow man, and enjoy the woman who has come the long way with him.”
“הרגישה קצת קורת רוח מן האינטימיות הזאת, שלא הייתה תלויה בסקס. האינטימיות הייתה עמוקה יותר, אישית יותר מזה.”
“גם בהם ניכר שהאהבה עברה שם; כלומר, החוויה הגופנית. כמה מוזר הוא השינוי המהותי המסתורי אך המובהק שהיא מחוללת, בגופם של גברים ונשים כאחד.”
“ההתפעמות המדהימה, העמוקה, שלא תיאמן, שנבעה מדיבור בלהיטות עם בחור נבון באמת שעות על שעות, ולחזור ולדבר יום אחרי יום חודשים רבים.”
“בגלל הסבל הרב שהיה מנת חלקו, נטשה אותו במידה כלשהי היכולת לסבול. הוא נשאר מוזר, מאיר פנים ושמח, ואפשר לומר כמעט חוגג.”