Quotes from Jean-Philippe Toussaint

The chances of seeing an idea through to completion are inversely proportional to the time you've spent talking about it beforehand.

In the fight between you and reality, be discouraging.

For the painful essence of withdrawal does not reside in the present suffering it brings - withdrawal is painless on the level of the immediate moment - but in the prospect of suffering to come, the rich future that one can imagine one's torture enjoying.

She misunderstood my method, in my opinion, not realizing that my approach, rather obscure to those unfamiliar, was based on the idea that in my struggle with reality, I could exhaust any opponent with whom I was grappling, like one can wear out an olive, for example, before successfully stabbing it with a fork, and that my propensity not to hasten matters, far from having a negative effect, in fact prepared for me a fertile ground where, when things seemed ripe, I could make my move with ease.

For where books, for instance, always offer a thousand times more than they are, television offers exactly what it is, its essential immediacy, its ever-evolving, always-in-progress superficiality.

Once again, it seemed, I was discovering the truth of the rule, a rule I'd never explicitly formulated to myself, but whose veracity I'd quite often sensed in a vague sort of way, which was that the chances of seeing an idea through to completion are inversely proportional to the time you've spent talking about it beforehand.

And yet that's the best way to watch television actively: with your eyes closed.

Il me semblait en effet qu'une idée, aussi brillante fût-elle, n'était pas vraiment digne d'être retenue si, pour simplement s'en souvenir, il fallait la noter.

I walked head down, pressing my feet down hard on the pavement to push the city under water.... With the town sinking at the rate of thirty centimeters a century, I explained, or three millimeters a year, or point zero zero zero zero zero zero one millimeter a second, one might reasonably hope, by pressing our feet down hard on the pavement as we walked, to play some part in the drowning of the town.

Écrire, c'est fermer les yeux en les gardant ouverts.

we had long silences together over the line. I liked those moments. With my ear close to the receiver, I'd try to hear her breath, her breathing. When she broke the silence, her voice became more important.

In the street, asked a running man the way to the post office. I've always enjoyed asking people in a hurry for information.

There wasn't a human being for several kilometers around, not a news-stand, not a shop, not a café, not a school. Not a cat, not a skinhead. Nothing.

omdat ze niet begreep dat ik met mijn benaderingswijze, die op het oog nogal ondoorzichtig was, in zekere zin beoogde de realiteit waarmee ik werd geconfronteerd murw te maken, zoals men er pas in slaagt bij voorbeeld een olijf aan zijn vork te prikken als men haar eerst murw heeft gemaakt, en dat mijn neiging nooit iets te forceren niet nadelig voor me was maar in werkelijkheid juist het terrein voor me effende waar ik, als de dingen me rijp leken, zou kunnen scoren.

Marie se sentait bien, nue sous les draps a l'abri de l'orage, les sens exacerbes dans le noir, les yeux brillants dans les eclairs, savourant avec volupte la dimension erotique du plaisir qu'il y a de jouir de l'orage dans la chaleur d'un lit, la fenetre ouverte dans la nuit, quand le ciel se dechire et les elements se dechainent. La main et le regard, il n'est jamais question que de cela dans la vie, en amour, en art.