Quotes from Romain Gary

On the whole, people are beginning to understand. Any fellow who's known war, fear, who thinks of his children and of the hydrogen tests, and of political oppression, is beginning to understand that the protection of nature concerns him directly. . .

Ecoute moi bien. La prochaine fois que ça t'arrive, qu'on insulte ta mère devant toi, la prochaine fois, je veux qu'on te ramène à la maison sur des brancards. Tu comprends ?

It's a bad break, staying so young at heart.

You can say anything you like about life, but one thing is certain: life doesn't give a damn. It has never made any clear distinction between happiness and misery. It simply doesn't watch where it's going.

There are those who have said about us, "What does she see in him?" or "What does he see in her?"; the usual sort of thing that only proves two people indeed see everything in each other.

The pristine vision of childhood restores freshness to even the most time-worn scenes, and in Laura's company I recovered some of the delights I had experienced years ago when my son was a little boy.

And I found myself falling off asleep, because in that half-awake state, one's sensibilities are blunted and happiness can still hover nearby...

Of course it's always possible to gain time, put up a front, try to last it out - how long, a year, eighteen months? I'd rather leave the arena before I am beaten to a pulp and have to be dragged out. One has to know how to accept the inevitable.

Moi ce qui m'a toujours paru bizarre, c'est que les larmes ont été prévues au programme. Ça veut dire qu'on a été prévu pour pleurer. Il fallait y penser. Il y a pas un constructeur qui se respecte qui aurait fait ça.

That night I hardly slept a wink, but turned over and over in my tent; never until then had I felt so alone or so deserted. Perhaps even the elephants are too small, I thought, as I stared into the darkness, and we need a far bigger and more affectionate presence at our side.

When a man close to sixty decides to break with a young woman whom he loves, and who loves him, what would you call it? — Damned stupidity, sir. — Yes, damned stupidity; in other words, 'good sense'.

J'ignore ce que c'est une dépression nerveuse, parce que pour moi c'est l'état normal de l'humanité." - Vingt questions à Romain Gary - L'affaire homme

Millions of people live in pain and anguish throughout the world, and it doesn't leak. I mean, it doesn't reach anyone. It isn't catching, as you say.

That's where his madness lies: in his incredible confidence, his total optimism. [...] And it was true that Morel seemed to be borne forward by a bewildering, almost contagious, confidence. Fields was beginning to be affected by it in spite of himself, and to feel that nothing would ever happen to his Frenchman.

We were then truly at the very bottom – I won't say at the bottom of the 'abyss' because I have since learned that the abyss is bottomless and that all records of falling and sinking can be broken there without ever exhausting the possibilities of that interesting institution.

Not that I had any intention of accosting him to propose any practical agreement. That would have demanded on Laura's part a degree of devotion, of understanding, a detached view of the purely animal act of love, such as could not be expected of so young a woman who was so subject conventions of comportment in a society that had always shown itself incapable of differentiating between love and sexuality.

He was suddenly overcome with hatred for his own face, for its flat, hard tightness, the narrow lips, the pale, cold eyes, the deadness. Overkill, he thought. That's what was showing on his face. Overkill. Shambles. You try hard, too hard, to get rid of that juvenile romantic in you and what happens then? You succeed, that's what happens. And it shows forever on your face. It turns to stone.

Laura is adorable, father. But she is made for enjoyment of life, for gaiety, happiness. You must realize that these are not the qualities upon which one can found a family...

Starzy majÄ… takÄ… samÄ… warto?? jak wszyscy, nawet jak siÄ™ zmniejszajÄ…. CzujÄ… tak samo jak wy i ja i czasami nawet jeszcze bardziej przez to cierpiÄ…, bo ju? nie mogÄ… sobie da? rady. Atakuje ich natura, która potrafi by? wstrÄ™tna maÅ'pa i wykaÅ"cza ich na wolnym ogniu.

He observed Morel with a cameraman's cold, professional stare, trying to decide why he found the man so French; he decided that it was a certain dark cheerfulness, a mixture of anger and irony, the voice and its drawling Parisian accent, and the line of the mouth which somehow always seemed to call for a Gauloise bleue.

It happens, too, that I've more belief in the fetishes of my black people than in the political and industrial trash in which others want to submerge them.

It's too pragmatic for me," Valenti said. "The know-how is good enough for technology, not for science.

I was thinking of the new future that our Communist science is opening to us," he said. "Our people are fully aware of that," Dr. Han Tse said rapidly. "Ever since we exploded our first bomb there has been happiness and rejoicing everywhere.

Colonialists respect nothing. They would take creatures royal in their primitive beauty, serene in their ignorance, and noble in their qaked simplicity, and would twist them out of shape, distort their minds, contaminate them with their own ideologies and abstractions.