A Certain Smile

The questions I would have liked to ask people were: ‘Are you in love? What are you reading?

I always wanted to ask people: “Are you in love? What are you reading?

I was thinking that I should be content to kiss him until the break of day. Bertrand ran out of kisses too soon; desire made them superfluous in his eyes. They were only a stage on the road to pleasure, not something inexhaustible and self-sufficient, as Luc had revealed them to me.

It's healthier to attribute qualities to others than to admit own flaws.

I liked to feel his desire. On the other hand, I didn’t like myself. That type of wild, cold little girl—”I have white teeth and a black heart”—seemed to me playacting for old gentlemen.

To live, in fact, means resolve everything so you can be satisfied. And that is not so easy.

We always want someone we've treated badly to be gay. It's less upsetting.

Happiness is like a flat plain without landmarks.

...at least, while the man is young, in this long cheating, which presents life, nothing seems desperately preferable than recklessness

I went to Luc’s without much enthusiasm and even with some trepidation: I was going to have to chat, be friendly and project an image of myself to them. I would have preferred to have lunch on my own, twirl a jar of mustard round between my fingers, and be vague, vague, completely vague . . .

For what Luc was in fact proposing was just a game, an enticing game, but, even so, one that could destroy my undoubtedly quite genuine feelings for Bertrand; and it could destroy something else within me, something ill-defined but fiercely felt, which, whether I liked it or not, was opposed to transience. Or, at the very least, to the intentionally transient nature of what Luc what was offering. And then, even if I was able to conceive of any passion or liaison as being short-lived, I couldn't accept in advance that it had to be that way. Like any individual for whom life is a series of charades, I could bear the charades only if they were written by me, and by me alone.

I mean, if you were indispensable to me, if I wanted you to myself, always? . . ." "It would bother me," he said. "I certainly shouldn't find it flattering." "And what would you say?" "I'd say: 'Dominique, hm . . . Dominique, forgive me.

We're only happy when we're tired," Luc once said, and it was true that I was one of those people who are only happy once they have subdued that part of their vitality which continually makes the demands and always feels misgivings: the part which asks "What have you done with your life? What are you going to make of it?" Questions to which I could only reply "Nothing.

I looked at his face from near by, studying its every line and listening with passionate interest to what he had to say. At last I felt like giving someone my wholehearted attention; I was delivered from myself and the still, small voice within.

Luc had a slow voice and large hands. I thought to myself: "He's just the kind that seduces little girls like me." I was already on my guard, but not sufficiently to avoid feeling a little stab of vexation when he asked us to come to lunch-with him and his wife-two days later.

Paris belonged to those who had no scruples, who were free and easy.