Quotes from Marcel Pagnol

je levais la main et je demandais des explications

Ils marchèrent toute la journée sur leurs ombres grandissantes.

J'avais surpris mon cher surhomme en flagrant délit d'humanité : je sentis que je l'en aimais davantage. Alors, je chantai la farandole, et je me mis à danser au soleil.

He lived in the ancient house where he was born, at the bottom of a vallon in the hills, three hundred meters from Massacan, surrounded by a pine wood, the silence of solitude, the odor of resin, and the perfume of rosemary.

In the solitary farmhouse of the hills there was a great joy in life, much tenderness, and much hope.

Her sea-blue eyes shone behind curls that hid her brow, and all her face had that vivid radiance that is retained by ripe nectarines for only a day, but glows for three or four years on the smooth cheeks of young girls.

She reads books all the time. Sometimes for an hour without stopping!" "That's not too good, Galinette. A poor girl who reads books—I can't say I care for that...

If only she would let me talk to her! I'm sure I could change her mind...That's what is needed, to change her mind. But how?

Si elle veut venir dans notre maison, moi mon idee, c'est qu'elle n'en partira jamais plus.

Tears rose to her eyes. It was the water of the hills, which could have saved her father, and instead wasted its richness in the sterile rocks and the subterranean night...

Ah, yes, it's the Soubeyrans...Three mad, three hanged, and me all alone with a no-good leg....And nobody after me...Nobody, nobody, nobody...

Ces travaux qui ne durèrent pas plus de 3 mois, occupent cependant dans ma mémoire, une place considérable, car c'est à la lumière du bec Matador que j'ai découvert l'intelligence de mes mains, et la prodigieuse efficacité des plus simples outils.

Tel est le peuple : ses défauts ne viennent que de son ignorance. Mais son coeur est bon comme le bon pain, et il a la générosité des enfants.

Les malheurs n'inspirent jamais confiance, et l'horreur des grands massacres enlaidit jusqu'aux victimes.

Quand on ne sait pas grand chose, on est toujours cruel pour ceux qui savent encore moins.

I had caught my dear superman red-handed in the act of being human: I felt that I loved him even more for it.

This is not a very surprising story; but wait a minute; it's going to be.

One also found there, in those days, a certain number of people learning to master bicycles. With fixed gaze and clenched jaws, they would suddenly bolt away from their teacher, shoot across the avenue, vanish into a thicket, and reappear with their machines round their necks.

Moreover, I discovered that day that grown-ups could lie just as well as I, and it seemed to me that I could no longer feel quite safe with them.

Of course I had a handkerchief. It lay, clean as a whistle, in my pocket where it had been for a week. For I had the knack of extracting from my nostrils, with the nail of my forefinger, the snuffling substances that impeded my breathing, and the use of a handkerchief seemed to me a piece of parental superstition.

J'ai envie d'ailleurs, voila ce qu'il faut dire. C'est une chose bete, une idee qui ne s'explique pas. J'ai envie d'ailleurs