Quotes from A Year in the Merde

Stephen Clarke ·  276 pages

Rating: (12.7K votes)


“If they wanted their shit stirred, then stirred their shit was jolly well going to be.”
― Stephen Clarke, quote from A Year in the Merde


“I was also sick of my neighbors, as most Parisians are. I now knew every second of the morning routine of the family upstairs. At 7:00 am alarm goes off, boom, Madame gets out of bed, puts on her deep-sea divers’ boots, and stomps across my ceiling to megaphone the kids awake. The kids drop bags of cannonballs onto the floor, then, apparently dragging several sledgehammers each, stampede into the kitchen. They grab their chunks of baguette and go and sit in front of the TV, which is always showing a cartoon about people who do nothing but scream at each other and explode. Every minute, one of the kids cartwheels (while bouncing cannonballs) back into the kitchen for seconds, then returns (bringing with it a family of excitable kangaroos) to the TV. Meanwhile the toilet is flushed, on average, fifty times per drop of urine expelled. Finally, there is a ten-minute period of intensive yelling, and at 8:15 on the dot they all howl and crash their way out of the apartment to school.” (p.137)”
― Stephen Clarke, quote from A Year in the Merde


“There's no room for human rights in a government waiting room.”
― Stephen Clarke, quote from A Year in the Merde


“He could have had “dull” tattooed across his forehead, but that would have made him too exciting.”
― Stephen Clarke, quote from A Year in the Merde


“There is a class of tourists who never seem to see the things they're visiting, I thought. They prefer to look at directions to the next place they're not going to look at.”
― Stephen Clarke, quote from A Year in the Merde



“Only the French, I thought, could attain orgasm by listening to themselves. It was self-inflicted oral sex. A DIY blowjob.”
― Stephen Clarke, quote from A Year in the Merde


“Words, it seems, are like felt pens. If you don't use them for a while they dry up.”
― Stephen Clarke, quote from A Year in the Merde


About the author

Stephen Clarke
Born place: in St. Albans, The United Kingdom
Born date October 15, 1958
See more on GoodReads

Popular quotes

“What can you do? There's the rub. The most important take-home message with diet and health is that anyone who ever expresses anything with certainty is basically wrong, because the evidence for cause and effect in this area is almost always weak and circumstantial, and changing an individual person's diet may not even be where the action is.”
― Ben Goldacre, quote from Bad Science


“In the Twoleg nests around them, lights began to appear in the dark holes in the walls. Lionblaze heard a Twoleg shouting angrily, but the dogs went on barking and pounding at the fence. His belly lurched when he saw that the small brown-and-white dog had stuck its head through the gap and the wood around it was starting to splinter. The dark tabby she-cat darted forward and slashed her claws at the dog’s nose. Yelping, it pulled back.”
― Erin Hunter, quote from Sunrise


“Everyone suffers at least one bad betrayal in their lifetime. It’s what unites us. The trick is not to let it destroy your trust in others when that happens. Don’t let them take that from you.”
― Sherrilyn Kenyon, quote from Invincible


“Monsters have the worst taste in women.”
― Tera Lynn Childs, quote from Sweet Venom


“Upon walking into Eva's kitchen, something profound happened to Delphine. She experienced a fabulous expansion of being. Light-headed, she felt a swooping sensation and then a quiet, as though she'd settled like a bird.”
― Louise Erdrich, quote from The Master Butchers Singing Club


Interesting books

Half the World
(21.4K)
Half the World
by Joe Abercrombie
The Last Word
(6.1K)
The Last Word
by Lisa Lutz
Magic Under Glass
(4.3K)
Magic Under Glass
by Jaclyn Dolamore
The Icarus Deception: How High Will You Fly?
(5.2K)
The Icarus Deception...
by Seth Godin
Kink
(737)
Kink
by Nikki Sex
Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Novels and Stories: Volumes I and II
(799)
Sherlock Holmes: The...
by Arthur Conan Doyle

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.