Quotes from Jean-Claude Izzo

Her fingers were burning hot. I felt as if she was branding me. For life.

After that, we weren't the same anymore. We'd become men. Disillusioned and cynical. Slightly bitter too. We had nothing. We hadn't even learned a trade. No future. Nothing but life. But life without a future is worse than no life at all.

Our taste for books came from Antonin, an old second-hand bookseller, an anarchist, whose shop was on Cours Julien. We'd cut classes to go see him. He'd tell us stories of adventures and pirates. The Caribbean. The Red Sea. The South Seas... Sometimes he'd stop, grab a book, and read us a passage. As if to prove that what he was telling us was true. Then he'd give it to us as a present.

Outside, it still smelled bad. I couldn't do anything about that. Neither could anyone. It was called life: a cocktail of love and hate, strength and weakness, violence and passivity.

Si ricordò di alcune riflessioni che aveva annotato di recente sul suo quadernetto. A proposito della povertà di vocabolario riguardante il mare. Solo i greci avevano tante parole per definirlo. Hals, il sale, il mare in quanto materia. Pelagos, la distesa d'acqua, il mare come visione, spettacolo. Pontos, il mare spazio e via di comunicazione. Thalassa, il mare in quanto evento. Kolpos, lo spazio marittimo che abbraccia la riva, il golfo o la baia...

Perché non riusciva a decidersi? Che cosa ci guadagnava a stare in mare, lontano da chi amava? Quale maledizione aveva colpito lui e tanti altri, che non trovavano il senso della vita se non lontano da ogni attracco?

letting myself be transported by her smile, the shape of her lips, the dimples in her cheeks, the astonishing mobility of her face. Looking at her, and feeling her knee against mine, gave me a chance not to think.

After the love, I went back on the other side of my border. Back to the territory where I have my own rules, my own laws, my own code, and my own stupid obsessions. The territory where I lose my way, and where I lost the women who ventured onto

After the love, I went back on the other side of my border. Back to the territory where I have my own rules, my own laws, my own code, and my own stupid obsessions. The territory where I lose my way, and where I lost the women who ventured onto it.

That sense of some distant, unknown country from where she'd come and toward which she seemed to want to return.

Se le vie marittime non si lasciano circoscrivere facilmente forse è perché sono intrecciate di racconti e le leggende: le carte su cui sono state segnate sono forse immaginarie, gli scritti che le accompagnano inventati

Il mediterraneo non è solo geografia. Non è solo storia. Ma è più di una semplice appartenenza.

comme beaucoup de Marseillais, les récits de voyages me comblaient plus que les voyages eaux-mêmes / come molti marsigliesi, i racconti di viaggi mi incantavano più dei viaggi stessi.

Pleasure involves respect, and respect starts with words.

Sometimes, all it takes is one gesture, one word, to change the course of someone's life. Even if you know it won't last forever.

I'd spent half of my life crying, the other half refusing to cry

Sometimes, all it takes is one gesture, one word, to change the course of someone's life. Even if you know it won't last forever.

The sensuality of desperate lives. Only poets talk like that. But poetry has never had an answer for anything. All it does it bear witness. To despair. And desperate lives.

Marseilles isn't a city for tourists. There's nothing to see. Its beauty can't be photographed. It can only be shared. It's a place where you have to take sides, be passionately for or against. Only then can you see what there is to see. And you realize, too late, that you're in the middle of a tragedy. An ancient tragedy in which the hero is death. In Marseilles, even to lose you have to know how to fight.

Pleasure involves respect, and respect starts with words.

I don't like answering private questions. The answers are often ambiguous and can be interpreted in different ways. Even when the other person is close to you.

So much violence. If God existed, I'd have strangled him on the spot. Without batting an eyelid. And with all the fury of the damned.

Days are only beautiful early in the morning. I should have remembered that. Dawn is merely an illusion that the world is beautiful. When the world opens its eyes, reality reasserts itself, and you're back with the same old shit.

I understand where you're coming from. I know it isn't just a question of revenge. It's the feeling there are some things you can't let pass. If you did, you wouldn't be able to look at yourself in the mirror afterwards.