Quotes from Jean-Dominique Bauby

When I began a diet a week before my stroke, I never dreamed of such a dramatic result.

The memory of that event has only just come back to me, now doubly painful: regret for a vanished past and, above all, remorse for lost opportunities. Mithra-Grandchamp is the women we were unable to love, the chances we failed to seize, the moments of happiness we allowed to drift away. Today it seems to me that my whole life was nothing but a string of those small near misses

In the past, it was known as a massive stroke, and you simply died. But improved resuscitation techniques have now prolonged and refined the agony.

Vincent had ten major ideas every week: three brilliant, five good, and two ridiculous.

In that hothouse atmosphere, criminal records bloomed like orchids all around us.

I skim through the issue [of Elle] and reach the offending photo, a montage that ridicules rather than glorifies our idol. It is one of the mysteries of our trade. You work for weeks on a subject, it goes back and forth among the most skillful pairs of hands, and no one spots the glaring blunder that a neophyte would spot in a second.

France was at peace; one couldn't shoot the bearers of bad news.