Quotes from Philippe Besson

Because now I know. I know that Thomas consented to this single picture only because he knew (had decided) that it was our last moment together. He smiled so that I could take his smile with me.

Je dis : c'est pour cette raison que tu as précisé que tu avais quelque chose d'étranger ? Il dit : oui, les yeux sombres, la peau brune. Et ce sentiment, qui sait, de ne pas être tout à fait à sa place, ici, d'être une sorte de déraciné, comme si on pouvait avoir le déracinement en héritage.

He says that for me things are simple, that everything will be fine, that I will get out of it, it's already written, that there's nothing to worry about, the world will greet me with open arms. Whereas for him there's a barrier, an impenetrable wall, forbidding him to deviate from what has been predetermined.

It's the most simple words that destroy us.

Lucas adds: Even so, there is something that has always struck me in the photos . . . my father often looks sad. I guess he didn't like having to smile on command.

Later I will write about this longing, the intolerable deprivation of the other. I will write about the sadness that eats away at you, making you crazy. It will become the template for my books, in spite of myself. I wonder sometimes if I have ever written of anything else. It's as if I never recovered from it: the inaccessible other, occupying all my thoughts.

Without the war, without this magnificent summer, this absence of men, would we ever have met?

I think: In the end, he remained hidden all his life. In spite of the great departure, the ambitious effort to forge a new existence, he fell back into all the same traps: shame, the impossibility of sharing a love that endures.

I listen to you, but all I want to remember is your skin, your smell, the life that pulses within you.

He says: It's a letter that was written a long time ago but never sent. It's addressed to you. It starts with your first name. It dates from August 1984.

I say to myself: Basically, what's new? Don't we already spend most of our time avoiding each other? Missing each other? I smile at the double meaning—an unsightly, tragic smile, of course.

It was love, of course. And tomorrow, there will be a great emptiness. But we could not continue—you have your life waiting for you, and I will never change. I just wanted to write to tell you that I have been happy during these months together, that I have never been so happy, and that I already know I will never be so happy again.

I will have to learn how to survive them, and perhaps writing is a good means of survival. A way of not forgetting the ones who have disappeared, of continuing a dialogue.

It is important to have friends. They are the meaning we give to life.

Je reviens sur la piste, je danse encore, j'oublie mon corps, j'oublie la honte.

Living by her side was like living in a fairy tale because she had these moments of pure poetry—she invented whole worlds. He tells me that eventually she was placed in a specialized institution, that in the end his father resigned himself to it: the death of his soul. She is still there.

J'ai eu l'impression qu'ils étaient comme les pièces d'un puzzle, vos romans, il suffisait d'assembler et ça formait une image compréhensible.

C'est lui qui reprend la parole : et vous ? Vous allez écrire sur cette histoire, n'est-ce pas ? Vous n'allez pas pouvoir vous en empêcher. Je répète que je n'écris jamais sur ma vie, que je suis un romancier. Il sourit : encore un de vos mensonges, pas vrai ? Je souris en retour.

T. me laisse parler. À la fin, il dit : c'est comme ça, il n'y a rien à discuter (je crois même qu'il dit : négocier). Si tu préfères, on arrête. Si tu ne supportes plus. Là, maintenant, tout de suite. Je dis : non, on n'arrête pas. La terreur de le perdre l'a emporté sur toute autre considération. La dépendance.

En France, des centaines de milliers de personnes défilent pour défendre l'école privée, qu'ils appellent l'école libre. La captation, l'usurpation de cet adjectif me rend fou. Ma conscience politique s'éveille.

À ceux-là, en général, j'explique que la vraisemblance importe plus que la vérité, que la justesse compte davantage que l'exactitude et surtout qu'un lieu, ce n'est pas une topographie mais la manière dont on le raconte, pas une photographie mais une sensation, une impression.

Those who have not taken this step, who have not come to terms with themselves, are not necessarily frightened, they are perhaps helpless, disoriented, lost as one is in the middle of a forest that's too dark or dense or vast.

He tells me something I did not know: that I will leave.

It was at the end of the day, at twilight--the hour we call "between a dog and a wolf.