Quotes from Patrick Modiano

citise undeva ca prima intalnire intre doua persoane este ca o rana usoara pe care o simte fiecare, trezindu-se din singuratate si din amorteala." Patrick Modiano, Orizontul, Humanitas 2015

No. She told me she was going to marry him, to get French nationality . . . She was obsessed with getting a nationality...

She was a pretty girl with an arid heart. Her fiancé had given her a chow-chow, but she didn't take care of it and left it with various people, as she would later do with me. The chow-chow killed itself by leaping from a window. The dog appears in two or three photos, and I have to admit that he touches me deeply and that I feel a great kinship with him.

One has to be aware of so-called witnesses.

Dicen que los lugares conservan por lo menos cierta huella de las personas que los han habitado.

Nada le perturbaba el sueño. Todavía no tenía memoria.

But these memories drifted away like bubbles of soap or fragments of a dream that vanished on waking.

For me, autumn has never been a sad season. The dying leaves and the days that grow shorter and shorter have never evoked the end of something for me but instead brought with them anticipation for the future. In Paris, during these October evenings, there is an electricity in the air at dusk. Even when it rains. I don't feel down at that time of night, nor does it seem that time is passing too swiftly. I have the feeling that anything is possible.

No hay mejor sistema para que se desvanezcan los fantasmas que mirarles a los ojos.

In big cities, in the summertime, people of long since lost track of each other or who don't even know each other meet one evening on the terrace, and lose each other again. And none of it really matters.

Và r?i c?ng có n?i s? b?n ch?n ?ó, th?nh tho?ng, tr??c vi?n c?nh các vai ph? mà ta ?? l?i sau l?ng có th? tìm th?y ta mà ?òi tính s?.

Without fully realizing it, I began writing my first book. It was neither a vocation nor a particular gift that pushed me to write, but quite simply the enigma posed by a man I had no chance of finding again, and by all those questions that would never have an answer.

Unless the line of a life, once it has reached its term, purges itself of all its useless and decorative elements. In which case, all that remains is the essential: the blanks, the silences and the pauses.

Khi th?c s? yêu m?t ng??i, thì ta c?n ph?i ch?p nh?n cái ph?n bí ?n c?a ng??i ?y... Và chính vì th? mà ta yêu ng??i ?y... Ph?i không h?, Roland?

Voleva evadere, fuggire sempre più lontano, rompere brutalmente con la vita quotidiana, per respirare all'aria aperta. E c'era poi, di tanto in tanto, quel timore panico di fronte alla prospettiva che le comparse che ti sei lasciato alle spalle potessero ritrovarti e venirti a chiedere conto di qualunque cosa. Bisognava nascondersi per sfuggire a quei ricattatori sperando un giorno definitivamente fuori dalla loro portata.

Il existait à Paris des zones intermédiaires, des no man's land où l'on était à la lisière de tout, en transit, ou même en suspens.

Something—he wondered later if it was simply his youth—something that had weighed upon him until that moment broke off him, the way a piece of rock slides slowly into the sea and disappears in a spray of foam.

So they would't suffer too much from hunger, they slept and rested in bed for as long as they could. They lost all notion of time, and if Brossier hadn't come back they would never have left that room, not even the bed, where they listened to music and little by little drifted off. The last thing they saw from the outside world were the snowflakes falling all day on the sill of the open window.

Ng??i ta không già ?i. V?i nh?ng n?m tháng trôi qua, nhi?u ng??i và nhi?u th? r?t cu?c tr? nên hài h??c và n?c c??i ??n m?c b?n ném vào h? và vào chúng m?t cái nhìn tr? con.

How long did they stay there in that room, on the narrow bed? She had a scar on her shoulder, in the shape of a star, that Louis couldn't help but run his lips over. A souvenir of a fall from a horse. It got dark. They could hear the clattering of hooves, a whinny, and the high-pitched voice of the marquis giving orders at more and more distant intervals, like a motif on a flute, clear and desolate, returning again and again.

I recognized one of the qualities I most admired in my wife: the beautiful big handwriting of the illiterate that she was. Darling,

I had hit bottom, and my only recourse was to push off hard with my heel to rise back to the surface.

He was enveloped in a fog of indifference that grew thicker and thicker. Did I have the right to rouse him from it, to force him to think of something painful?

It's not a large crowd," he said, "and I have the feeling this wedding party is going to end in an orgy." He shrugged his shoulders.