Quotes from Romain Gary

Les hobos évitaient, en général, d'apprendre des langues, pour ne pas se laisser piéger par tous les trucs qui vont avec le vocabulaire, lequel est toujours celui des autres, une espèce d'héritage, qui vous tombe dessus.

C'est fini, Gary Cooper. Fini pour toujours. Fini, l'Américain tranquille, sûr de lui et de son droit, qui est contre les méchants, toujours pour la bonne cause, et qui fait triompher la justice et gagne toujours à la fin. Adieu l'Amérique des certitudes.

rien n'est blanc ou noir et que le blanc, c'est souvent le noir qui se cache et le noir, c'est parfois le blanc qui s'est fait avoir.

Io credo che sono gli ingiusti quelli che dormono meglio, perché se ne fregano, mentre i giusti non possono chiudere occhio e si fanno il sangue marcio per tutto. Se no non sarebbero giusti.

J'étais tellement heureux que je voulais mourir parce que le bonheur il faut le saisir pendant qu'il est là.

You're nice. You aren't like the rest of them. I like you very much... — I've done nothing to deserve that. — One doesn't have to do anything to deserve that...

To the people, Morel was the hero of a cause that had nothing to do with nations and political ideologies, a cause that had nothing to do with Africa and touched what was deepest in them — a secret rancor — a confused dream of being able one day to emerge victorious from the difficulty of being a man. They were staking a claim to respectful and decent treatment.

Le docteur Ramon est même allé chercher mon parapluie Arthur, je me faisais du mauvais sang car personne n'en voudrait à cause de sa valeur sentimentale, il faut aimer.

Madame Rosa voyait que les gens devenaient de plus en plus gentils avec elle et ce n'est jamais bon signe.

M. Honoré is coming down the staircase. He holds himself straight and stiff, his cane under his arm. He does not look at Monsieur Karl, but through him. And every time Monsieur Karl feels humiliated. He wouldn't mind being hated: but he doesn't want to be ignored. He has the impression that he no longer exists, while this cracked Frenchman is going past.

Obviously, I wasn't mistaking cathedrals for custard, but, having been raised among the kites of 'that crazy old Fleury,' I had a soft spot for anything that allows a man to give the best of himself.

He had himself a certain sympathy for Morel; unfortunately, the man had not understood that the world of today was no longer capable of concerning itself with elephants. People had other preoccupations. They were no longer interested in anything except their own skins.

C'est là que je viens me cacher quand j'ai peur. - Peur de quoi, Madame Rosa ? - C'est pas nécessaire d'avoir des raisons pour avoir peur, Momo. Ça, j'ai jamais oublié, parce que c'est la chose la plus vraie que j'aie jamais entendue.

Sad? — No. But I hate winter. I hate the snow. In weather like this, you'd really think that the world wasn't made for man and that we're here by accident.

Besides, he had slept with a good number of women in his life: it had nothing to do with that need for company. He stubbed out his cigarette in the sand: What he needed was a good dog who would come and offer his paw from time to time.

This African revolutionary was no different from all the other revolutionaries who inscribed the words 'liberty,' 'justice' and 'progress' on their flags and then went on to kill, to torture and to suppress all living liberty in the name of their noble and human goal.

The idea that a professional tracker like Idriss could suddenly start suffering from a sort of poetic remorse, soulfulness, regret at the memory of the animals he had tracked down— such an idea could only come to birth in decadent brains and exquisite sensitivities freshly arrived from Europe — which were the beginning of all our troubles in Africa and elsewhere, be it said in passing.

Non c'è bisogno di motivi per aver paura, Momò". Questa non me la sono mai dimenticata, perché è la cosa più vera che ho mai sentito dire.

Not that I would describe fidelity as an exclusive contract, but rather a mutual devotion within shared assumptions. [...] She was greatly distressed, clearly more distressed than my condition warranted, and explained to me that when she was called and told of my accident she had been on the point of going to bed with a friend of mine. She left without a word to come to my side. That is what I mean by fidelity: putting love before pleasure.

It's absolutely essential that man should manage to preserve something other than what helps to make soles for shoes or sewing machines, that he should leave a margin, a sanctuary, where some of life's beauty can take refuge and where he himself can feel safe from his own cleverness and folly. Only then will it be possible to begin talking of civilization.

Ce qu'il y a en effet de frappant dans l'« accélération de l'histoire » que nous vivons, c'est que cette vitesse vertigineuse à laquelle le monde court vers l'avenir s'accompagne d'une absence de contrôle sur la direction de marche.

What progress requires inexorably of human beings and of continents is that they should renounce their strangeness, that they should break with mystery; and somewhere along that road is inscribed inexorably the end of the last elephant. The cultivated lands must encroach upon the forests, and the roads will bite more and more deeply into the quietude of the great herds. There will be less and less room for natural splendor. A pity.

Or, il ne s'agissait nullement d'un délirant mais d'un cas extrême de cette connerie renseignée, informée sur tout, qui sait, qui « connaît » et à qui « on ne la fait pas ».

Lila was in no hurry to leave; it was pleasurable for her to see herself in my silently adoring gaze, where she reigned—I was her kingdom....