Quotes from J.M.G. Le Clézio

Real lives have no end. Real books have no end.

Horror is not unimaginable, it has neither the face of a monster nor the bat-wings of a demon. It is calm and tranquil, and it is durable, lasting whole days and nights, months; years, perhaps. It is not mortal. It strikes at the eyes, only the eyes.

Most people don't know how to ask the right questions. Mondo knew how to ask questions, just at the right time, when you weren't expecting it. People paused for a few seconds, they stopped thinking about themselves and their own business, they thought, and their eyes seemed to blur, because they remembered asking those questions themselves, long ago.

He who writes books that aim to convince is a comedian, too, just a comedian. What has he got to offer others, apart from chains, still more chains? Fiction never liberated anyone. No one ever brought anything back from voyages through dream worlds.

They were the men and the women of the sand, of the wind, of the light, of the night. They appeared as in a dream, at the crest of a dune, as if they were born of the cloudless sky.

La nuit, tout sent bon, disait Mondo. C'est parce qu'on ne voit pas, disait Thi Chin. on sent mieux, et on entend mieux quand on ne voit pas.

There is no such thing as self-awareness. Imagine thought retreating into itself to think about itself. It would be easier to imagine a revolver bullet extracting itself from its victim's wound and re-entering the barrel. Yes, it would be easier to imagine the universe's explosion suddenly halting its outflow of energy, so that the galaxies congeal once more, and the millions of light-years of their flight through space are immediately annulled.

Each time a drop of water forms under the spout of a tap, it means that one can wrench something away from the nameless mass.

The earth is neither fabulous nor paradisal. And therefore it is not hell.

Quelque chose brûle en moi. J'attends et je n'attends pas. C'est peut-être dans cette rupture, dans cet instant, entre les deux pulsions, l'une qui va vers l'infini du oui, l'autre vers l'infini du non, qu'est le lieu de la vie.

The desert is so vast that no one can know it all. Men go out into the desert, and they are like ships at sea; no one knows when they will return.

One day is enough to master reading in Korean. Hangeul is a very scientific and convenient alphabet system for communication.

W]hat is one to say of the writer who lies when he writes that he is lying?

human beings, cans of living preserves

Ils étaient les hommes et les femmes du sable, du vent, de la lumière, de la nuit. Ils étaient apparus, comme dans un rêve, en haut d'une dune, comme s'ils étaient nés du ciel sans nuages.

El ruido de su reloj terminó por alcanzarlo, de manera progresiva, como si hubiera una fuga de agua en la que cada gota se sumara a la anterior; a fin de construir una estalactita quese moviese e insertase milímetro a milímetro en su cerebro.

M]ay not literature (and, in particular, fiction) be considered a desperate and permanently thwarted effort to produce a unique form of expression? Something like a cry, perhaps, a cry that, somehow, inexplicably contains all the millions of words that have ever existed, anywhere, in any age. In contrast with the spoken word and its classifying function, the purpose of writing seems, rather, to be a quest for the egg, the seed, nothing more.

You don't mean to say that Hogan has turned into a woman? Why, yes, that's him all right, you can recognize him by the fact that he has two legs, two arms, and an indecipherable face. Man, woman, what difference does it make? Are they not all exactly the same, these little black insects with their rhythmic movements, the same eyes, the same thoughts?

All words are possible, then, all names. They rain down, all these words, they disintegrate into a powdery avalanche. Belched from the volcano's mouth, they spurt in to the sky, then fall again. In the quivering air, like gelatine, the sounds trace their bubble paths. Can you imagine that?

Vivre, connaître la vie, c'est le plus léger, le plus subtil des apprentissages. Rien à voir avec le savoir." L'inconnu sur la terre

Il n'y a pas de plus grande émotion que d'entrer dans le désert.

La mémoire d'un enfant exagère les distances et les hauteurs.