Quotes from Andreï Makine

Men can be pitiless towards a woman whose body has eluded them, particularly if this is thanks to their own cowardice.

Love is in essence subversive.

In war the most testing moments are those of peace , for a dead man lying in the grass makes the living see the world as it would be, but for their folly.

He had already come to see human lives as one single communal life and it was perhaps this perception that gave him hope.

their life will be made of the same stuff as this spring afternoon.

The though revives in him the oldest memory of his life. A child sees a door closing: without knowing who it is that has just left, he senses it is someone he loves with all his tiny, still mute being.

Their own life together was like a subtle watercolor sketch, invisible to other people. They gave the world what it required of them and for the rest of the time were content to be forgotten.

This sacrifice, which saved his life, reminded him again that the evil of this world could be put to rout by the will of a single human being.

An exile's only country is his country's literature.

Quand la mort nous regarde calmement dans les yeux, nous nous rendons compte qu'il y a eu dans notre vie quelques heures, de soleil ou de nuit, quelques visages auxquels nous revenons sans cesse, et qu'en fait ce qui nous rendait vivants, c'est les simple espoir de les retrouver...

Volsky once more had the feeling that the bond between them was indifferent to the demise of bodies.

The fatal mistake we make is looking for a paradise that endures … What remains is a fleeting paradise that lives on for all time, having no need of doctrines.

Historians rewrite the truth every day. What interests us is the truth that gets the reader to reach for his wallet

Once again, without explaining anything, they understood that they must leave. Go away before this world woke up and continued with a life from which they were forever excluded.

He should have told Vlad that in the old days a collection of poems could change your life, but a single poem could also cost the life of its author.

The loudspeaker on the wall crackles, hisses, and suddenly announces, in astonishingly soothing tones, that a train is going to be delayed. An ocean swell of sighs ripples through the waiting room.

FranÈ›a nu mai era pentru mine o simpl? colecÈ›ie de curiozit??i, ci o f?ptur? sensibil? È™i consistent?, din care, într-o zi, o f?râm? fusese grefat? în mine.

she studies to be equal in a world that is no longer surprised at anything