Quotes from Irene Nemirovsky

Ci sono quelle che aspettano lo stesso uomo, e quelle che aspettano un uomo diverso da quello che è partito, disse fra sé, e tutte restano deluse.

Giunge un'età, infatti, in cui la pietà che avevamo per i bambini prende un'altra forma, un'età in cui contempliamo i volti rugosi dei vecchi e intuiamo che un giorno saremo come loro... È allora che finisce la prima infanzia.

For years, everything done in France within a certain social class has had only one motive: fear. This social class caused the war, the defeat and the current peace. The Frenchmen of this caste hate no one; they feel neither jealousy nor disappointed ambition, nor any real desire for revenge. They're scared.

They looked around and expected some miracle: a car, a truck, anything that would take them. But nothing came. So they headed out of Paris on foot, past the city gates, dragging their bags behind them in the dust, then on into the suburbs, into the countryside, all the while thinking, "This can't be happening! I must be dreaming!

Silently, with no lights on, cars kept coming, one after the other, full to bursting with baggage and furniture, prams and birdcages, packing cases and baskets of clothes, each with a mattress tied firmly to the roof.

She had her children, her three children! Sometimes a thought shot through her, as sharp and rapid as lightning, of her two older sons, in danger, far away: Philippe and that mad Hubert. She'd been desperate when Hubert ran away, yet rather proud of him. His behaviour had been irrational, wild, but manly. For them, Philippe and Hubert, she could do nothing, but her three little ones!

I know that I am more intelligent, superior, more valuable where goodness is concerned than those men. They are strong but their strength is temporary and an illusion. It will be drained from them by time, defeat, the hand of fate, illness (as was the case with Napoleon). And everyone will be dumbfounded. "But how?" people will say. "They were the ones we were afraid of!

Dictatorship is built around this confusion. Napoleon said he only desired the greatness of France, but he proclaimed to Metternich,11 "I don't give a damn if millions of men live or die.

let me at least retain the right to decide my own destiny, to laugh at it, defy it, escape it if I can. A slave? Better to be a slave than a dog who thinks he's free as he trots along behind his master.

La vida es eso, alegría y llanto.

All around him, in his house, everything consisted of fragments of beauty. Sometimes modest, sometimes valuable, these fragments combined to form a unique atmosphere of soft luminosity – the only one worthy of a cultured man, he thought. When he was twenty he had worn a ring with an inscription inside: This thing of Beauty is a guilt for ever (Monsieur

Gy?lölte a háborút. Nem egyszer?en az életét vagy a jólétét fenyegette, hanem sokkal többet – a regények világát rombolta le minden pillanatban, az egyetlent, amelyben boldognak érezte magát. Mint egy diszharmonikus, félelmetes harsona, amire összeomlanak az önmaga és a külsÅ' világ közé oly sok fáradtsággal emelt, törékeny kristályfalak.

Si supiéramos lo que recogeremos por adelantado, ¿quién sembraría su campo?

A novel should be like a street full of strangers, where no more than two or three people are known to us in depth. Look at writers like Proust. They knew how to use minor characters to humiliate, to belittle their protagonists.

It's sad," said Lucile, thinking of all the girls whose youth was passing them by in vain: the men were gone, prisoners or dead. The enemy took their place. It was deplorable, but no one would even know in the future. It would be one of those things posterity would never find out, or would refuse to see out of a sense of shame.

the Seine beneath his windows, the graceful curve of the wall between his two reception rooms, the fireplace with its antique andirons and the high ceilings where light floated, a clear light coloured green and as transparent as water because it was filtered through almond-coloured canvas blinds on the balcony.

Planes," Florence replied, looking up at the sky. "Won't they leave me the hell alone?" he thundered. He hated the war; it threatened much more than his lifestyle or peace of mind. It continually destroyed the world of the imagination, the only world where he felt happy. It was like a shrill, brutal trumpet shattering the fragile crystal walls he'd taken such pains to build in order to shut out the rest of the world.

Christian charity, the compassion of centuries of civilization, fell from her like useless ornaments, revealing her bare, arid soul. She needed to feed and protect her children. Nothing else mattered any more.

For a number of Russian writers and poets, St. Petersburg is a mythical city; to Irène Némirovsky it was nothing more than a collection of dark, snow-covered streets, swept by the icy wind that rose from the disgusting, polluted canals of the Neva.

He lived in a universe of light and peace. He was destined to be hated and betrayed by everyone. He then remembered his servants and snorted. It was the dawn of a new age, a warning and an omen! With difficulty, for the joints in his knees were painful, he stood up, rubbed the small of his back with his hands and went to his office to get the hammer and nails to close up the packing case. He took it down to the car himself: there was no need for the concierge to know what he was carrying.

Dar porÈ›ile de fier din toate g?rile erau deja z?vorâte È™i p?zite de soldaÈ›i. MulÈ›imea se ag??a de bare, le zgâlÈ›âia, apoi se retr?gea în dezordine pe str?zile vecine. Femeile fugeau plângând, cu copiii în braÈ›e. Erau oprite ultimele taxiuri. Li se ofereau dou?, trei mii de franci ca s? p?r?seasc? Parisul. <> Dar È™oferii refuzau, nu mai aveau benzin?.

But why are we always the ones who have to suffer?" she cried out in indignation. "Us and people like us? Ordinary people, the lower middle classes.

Os acontecimentos graves, felizes ou infelizes, não alteram a alma de um homem, mas precisam-na, tal como uma rajada de vento revela a forma de uma árvore ao varrer num ápice as folhas mortas; trazem para a luz aquilo que estava relegado na sombra; inclinam o espírito na direcção em que passará a crescer.

Well, that's the way to do it,' Michaud said, lightly shrugging his shoulders, his voice nonchalant. 'Give the people you should be apologising to a good telling off, that's it!' In spite