Quotes from Patrick Modiano

Je m'appelle Rebecca et je vous aime. Je ne sus que répondre. — Voilà, m'expliqua-t-elle, ils vont vous tuer. Il faut que vous partiez dès ce soir. Je m'en occupe. Je suis officier de l'armée israélienne, et je n'ai pas de compte à rendre au commandant du camp. [...] Je vous aime, je vous aime. Je vous ferai appeler dans mon bureau ce soir à huit heures. Rompez!

Usually, when I came home by myself at night, I would get to the corner or Rue Coustou and suddenly feel like I was leaving the present and sliding into a zone where time had stopped. And I was terrified of never being able to cross back, to return to Place Blanche, where life was being lived. I though I would remain forever a prisoner of that little street and that room, like Sleeping Beauty.

Some sentences remain etched in your mind forever.

He gazed at us one after the other, as if to reassure himself that there was no danger in sharing a confidence.

The man was as slippery and elusive as his gaze.

Hutte was always saying that, in the end, we are all "beach men" and that "the sand"--I am quoting his own words-- keeps the traces of our footsteps only a few moment

Somos classificados nas mais estranhas categorias, das quais nunca ouvimos falar, e que não correspondem ao que somos, em absoluto. Convocam-nos. Internam-nos. Bem que gostaríamos de saber o motivo.

Mas parece que o que nos impulsiona de uma hora para outra a uma fuga é um dia frio e cinzento, que aumenta nossa solidão, que nos faz sentir com mais força que algo vai explodir.

How could the war have any semblance of reality when you found yourself sitting under a plane tree in a playground, in the provincial calm of an early afternoon?

Farther up, in the recess formed by the palace wing, was a clock. And behind that clock, the cell of the Prisoner of Zenda. No stroller in the Carrousel gardens ventured down that alley. We spent entire afternoons playing amid the broken birdbaths and statues, the stones and dead leaves. The hands of the clock never moved. They forever struck five-thirty. Those immobile hands enveloped us in a deep, soothing silence. We only had to stay in the alley and nothing would ever change.

Yvonne se estaba acercando a nuestra mesa con un fular de muselina verde alrededor del cuello. Me sonreía y no apartaba la vista de mí. Algo se me dilataba del lado izquierdo del pecho y decidí que aquel día era el más hermoso de mi vida.

you can make it up completely. A new life. They're not going to go and check. As you tell of this imaginary life, great breaths of fresh air rush across a closed room in which you have been unable to breathe for a long time. A window abruptly opens, the shutters bang in the breeze. You have, once again, a future before you.

Ultimately, how far away exactly does a novelist remain? At the margins of life in order to describe it, because if you are immersed in it – in the action – the image you have of it is mixed up.

On vous classe dans des catégories bizarres dont vous n'avez jamais entendu parler et qui ne correspondent pas à ce que vous êtes réellement.

La nuit tombe tôt et cela vaut mieux : elle efface la grisaille et la monotonie de ces jours de pluie où l'on se demande s'il fait vraiment jour et si l'on ne traverse pas un état intermédiaire, une sorte d'éclipsé morne, qui se prolonge jusqu'à la fin de l'après-midi.

He was haunted by what he called "fixed points." In this uninterrupted stream of women, men, children, and dogs that pass by and end up lost from sight among the streets, it would be nice to hold on to a face once in a while.

Par moments, le lien s'amenuise et risque de se rompre, d'autres soirs la ville d'hier m'apparaît en reflets furtifs derrière celle d'aujourd'hui.

The Champs-Elysées...It's like that pond a British novelist talks about, at the bottom of which, in layered deposits, lie the echoes of the voices of every passerby who has daydreamed on its banks.The shimmering water preserves those echoes forever and, on quiet evenings, they all blend together...

Cette sensation d'étrangeté est la même que celle qui vous prend lorsque vous marchez en rêve dans un quartier inconnu. Au réveil, vous réalisez peu à peu que les rues de ce quartier étaient décalquées sur celles qui vous sont familières le jour.

Si yo no diera fe de ello, no quedaría huella de la presencia de esa desconocida y de la de mi padre en un coche celular en febrero de 1942, en los Campos elíseos. Sólo serían personas —muertas o vivas— a las que se clasifica en la categoría de "individuos no identificados

Je me rends compte aujourd'hui qu'il m'a fallu écrire deux cents pages pour capter, inconsciemment, un vague reflet de la réalité.

We live at the mercy of certain silences. We have all known things about each other for a long time. So we try to avoid each other. It would be for the best, of course, if none of us were ever to see each other again.

Mais il semble que ce qui vous pousse brusquement à la fugue, c'est un jour de froid et de grisaille qui vous rend encore plus vive la solitude et vous fait sentir encore plus fort qu'un étau se resserre.

As the years go by, many people and many things end up seeming so humorous and so pathetic that all you can do is try to look at them through the eyes of a child.