Quotes from Irene Nemirovsky

In general, you know that I am completely isolated from society and am unaware of all the recently adopted directives regarding the press.

SimÈ›ea mil? de tovar??ii lui de suferin??, dar o mil? lucid? È™i rece. La urma urmelor, aceste mari migraÈ›ii umane p?reau dictate de legi ale naturii, îÈ™i zicea el. Deplas?ri periodice de mase considerabile erau probabil necesare popoarelor, cum e transhumanÈ›a pentru oi. În mod straniu, ideea îl înt?rea.

Others were compiling a hasty mental inventory of all the pages they'd written, all the speeches they'd given, which might help them win favour with the new government (and since they had all more or less lamented the fact that France had lost her greatness, lost her daring and was no longer producing children, none of them was very worried).

Perchè l'uomo, per vivere, ha bisogno di un minimo di aria respirabile, di una certa dose di ossigeno e di illusioni.

A un certo grado di tragico orrore, lo spirito umano, saturo, reagisce con l'indifferenza e l'egoismo

Such madness. When you're 20, love is like a fever. It makes you almost delirious. When it's over, you can hardly remember how it happened. Fire in the blood, how quickly it burns out.

What a beautiful horse! They really do have beautiful horses, by God." The young girls sighed. Then the bitter voice of some old man dozing by the stove called out, "Sure they do, they're our horses!

The serving girl—plump, round and rosy-cheeked—moved quickly between the tables. The soldiers smiled at her. She felt torn between the desire to smile back at them, because they were young, and the fear of getting a bad reputation, because they were the enemy—so she frowned and tightly pursed her lips, without, however, quite managing to erase the two dimples on her cheeks which showed her secret pleasure.

Tutti e due pensavano ai giovani – i loro fratelli, i loro amici – le cui ossa erano in decomposizione sotto terra, nelle innumerevoli fosse comuni. Loro, i sopravvissuti, adesso lo sapevano, di essere mortali. È una lezione che di solito si impara da adulti, ma quelli che hanno dovuto apprenderla a vent'anni non la scordano più. Ah, com'era importante affrettarsi a respirare, baciare, bere, fare l'amore!

a good education is precisely designed to correct the instincts of human nature.

In the darkness the danger seemed to grow. You could smell the suffering in the air, in the silence. Even people who were normally calm and controlled were overwhelmed by anxiety and fear. Everyone looked at their house and thought, "Tomorrow it will be in ruins, tomorrow I'll have nothing left. We haven't hurt anyone. Why?

What's the difference! It's only stone, wood—nothing living! What matters is survival!" Who cared about the tragedy of their country? Not these people, not the people who were leaving that night. Panic obliterated everything that wasn't animal instinct, involuntary physical reaction. Grab the most valuable things you own in the world and then Ã¢â'¬Â¦!

Come sempre, quando si attende la morte di qualcuno che non è necessario alla propria esistenza, al proprio respiro, si pensa più a se stessi che alla persona in fin di vita.

They slept so soundly, though, nothing would wake them before daybreak. That was obvious. They could pass from sleep to death without even realising it.

Madame, I am a soldier. Soldiers don't think. I'm told to go somewhere and I go. Told to fight, I fight. Told to get myself killed, I die. Thinking would make fighting more difficult and death more terrible." "But what about enthusiasm Ã¢â'¬Â¦Ã¢â'¬Â "Madame, forgive me, but that's a term a woman would use. A man does his duty even without enthusiasm. Perhaps that's the way you know he's a man, a real man.

His chauffeur, who was in the same situation as him, said, "If you have to go, you go. But if they think it'll be like '14, they've got it all wrong." (The word "they" in his mind meant some mythical council whose purpose and passion was to send other people to their deaths.) "If they think we'll do that again

The surging wave of refugees surrounded the truck, preventing them from moving forward. Sometimes it was impossible for the soldiers to move at all. They would fold their arms and wait until someone let them pass.

He walked towards them with all the kindness and goodwill he was capable of, but all he felt in their presence was coldness and disgust, not a single glimmer of love, nothing of that divine feeling which even the most miserable of sinners awoke in him when begging for forgiveness. There was more humility in bragging atheists, in hardened blasphemers, than in the eyes and words of these children. Their superficial obedience was terrifying

Ci vuole così poco per spostare la vita in questa o in quella direzione!

Now she mocked and berated herself fiercely. She was mad. She, a woman of twenty, had behaved like a little twelve-year-old child. 'But I'm not a woman,' she thought. 'There are people who are ageless, and I'm one of them. I was an old woman at twelve, and even when I have white hair I'll be exactly the same in my heart as I am today. Why be ashamed of it?

The door was slightly ajar and Madame Péricand could sense the presence of the other servants outside. Madeleine, the maid, was so beside herself with worry that she came right up to the doorway. To Madame Péricand, such a breach of the normal rules seemed a frightening indication of things to come. It was in just this manner that the different social classes all ended up on the top deck during a shipwreck.

La strana felicità che provavano…quella fretta di far conoscere il proprio cuore l'uno all'altra…una fretta da amanti che è già un dono, il primo, il dono dell'anima prima di quello del corpo. "Conoscimi, guardami. Io sono così. Ecco come ho vissuto, ecco cosa ho amato. E tu? E tu, amore mio?

Up till now, I thought my wife was in some camp in France, in the custody of French soldiers. To learn she is in an uncivilised country, in conditions that are probably atrocious, without money or food and with people whose language she does not even know, is unbearable. It is now no longer a matter of getting her out of a camp sooner rather than later but of saving her life.

Danger, courage, fear, love: now he knew the real meaning of these words Ã¢â'¬Â¦ Yes, even love Ã¢â'¬Â¦ He felt better now, stronger, and very confident. He would never see the world through anyone else's eyes again. But more than that, anything he might love and believe from now on would come from himself, and no one else. Slowly, he put his hands together, lowered his head and, finally, prayed.