Quotes from Suite Française

“Adieu," he said, "this is goodbye. I'll never forget you, never."
She stood silent. He looked at her and saw her eyes full of tears. He turned away.
At this moment she wasn't ashamed of loving him, because her physical desire had gone and all she felt towards him now was pity and a profound, almost maternal tenderness. She forced herself to smile. "Like the Chinese mother who sent her son off to war telling him to be careful 'because war has its dangers,' I'm asking you, if you have any feelings for me, to be as careful as possible with your life."
Because it is precious to you?" he asked nervously.
Yes. Because it is precious to me.”
― Irène Némirovsky, quote from Suite Française

“How sad the world is, so beautiful yet so absurd...”
― Irène Némirovsky, quote from Suite Française

“But what is certain is that in five, ten or twenty years, this problem unique to our time, according to him, will no longer exist, it will be replaced by others...Yet this music, the sound of this rain on the windows, the great mournful creaking of the cedar tree in the garden outside, this moment, so tender, so strange in the middle of war, this will never change, not this, this is forever.”
― Irène Némirovsky, quote from Suite Française

“...for music alone can abolish differences
of language or culture between two people and invoke something indestructible within them.”
― Irène Némirovsky, quote from Suite Française

“After all, people judge one another according to their own feelings. It is only the miser who sees other enticed by money, the lustful who see others obsessed by desire.”
― Irène Némirovsky, quote from Suite Française

“All the light of the day, fleeing the earth, seemed for one brief moment to take refuge in the sky; pink clouds spiralled round the full moon that was as green as pistachio sorbet and as clear as glass; it was reflected in the lake.”
― Irène Némirovsky, quote from Suite Française

“...because all happiness is contagious, and disarms the spirit of hatred.”
― Irène Némirovsky, quote from Suite Française

“Paris had its sweetest smell, the smell of chestnut trees in bloom and of petrol with a few grains of dust that crack under your teeth like pepper. In the darknes the danger seemed to grow. You could smell the suffering in the air, in the silence. Everyone looked at their house and thought, "Tomorrow it will be in ruins, tomorrow I'l have nothing left.”
― Irène Némirovsky, quote from Suite Française

“They felt a strange happiness, an urgent need to reveal their hearts to each other- the urgency of lovers, which is already a gift, the very first one, the gift of the soul before the body surrenders. 'Know me, look at me. This is who I am. This is how I have lived, this is what I have loved. And you? What about you, my darling?”
― Irène Némirovsky, quote from Suite Française

“What separates or unites people is not their language, their laws, their customs, their principles, but the way they hold their knife and fork.”
― Irène Némirovsky, quote from Suite Française

“Heureux sont ceux qui peuvent aimer et haïr sans feinte, sans détour, sans nuance.”
― Irène Némirovsky, quote from Suite Française

“The tender June day persisted, refusing to die. Each pulse of light was fainter and more exquisite than the last, as if bidding farewell to the earth, full of love and regret.”
― Irène Némirovsky, quote from Suite Française

“These two sections [of Irene Nemirovsky's Suite Francaise], plus some of the author's notes, are all we have -- this in itself is a tragedy and waste of war. Had this novel been finished we would be hailing it as one of the supreme works of literature. As it stands, it is like a great cathedral gutted by a bomb. The ruined shell still soars to heaven, a reminder of the human spirit triumphing despite human destructiveness.”
― Irène Némirovsky, quote from Suite Française

“This thing of Beauty is a Guilt forever.”
― Irène Némirovsky, quote from Suite Française

“I keep telling you, you don't pay enough attention to the minor characters. A novel should be like a street full of strangers, where no more than two or three people are known to us in depth.”
― Irène Némirovsky, quote from Suite Française

“He hated the war; it threatened much more than his lifestyle or peace of mind. It continually destroyed the world of the imagination, the only world where he felt happy.”
― Irène Némirovsky, quote from Suite Française

“Mothers and women in love: both ferocious females.”
― Irène Némirovsky, quote from Suite Française

“Evil is visible, it burns, it smugly displays itself for all to see.”
― Irène Némirovsky, quote from Suite Française

“Dopo tutto, si giudicano gli altri solo in base al proprio cuore: l’avaro vede sempre la gente spinta dall’interesse, il lussurioso dall’ossessione del desiderio.”
― Irène Némirovsky, quote from Suite Française

“An enemy soldier never seemed to be alone--one human being like any other--but followed, crushed from all directions by innumerable ghosts, the missing and the dead. Speaking to him wasn't like speaking to a solitary man but to an invisible multitude; nothing that was said was either spoken or heard with simplicity: there was always that strange sensation of being no more than lips that spoke for so many others, others who had been silenced.”
― Irène Némirovsky, quote from Suite Française

“So what? German or French, friend or enemy, he's first and foremost a man and I'm a woman. He's good to me, kind, attentive. . .that's good enough for me. I'm not looking for anything else. Our lives are complicated enough with all these wars and bombings. Between a man and a woman, none of that's important. I couldn't care less if the man I fancy is English or black - I'd still offer myself to him if I got the opportunity.”
― Irène Némirovsky, quote from Suite Française

“Anything was better than music, for music alone can abolish differences of language or culture between two people and evoke something indestructible within them.”
― Irène Némirovsky, quote from Suite Française

“- Draga moja prijateljice, imam sezdeset godina, ne plasim se smrti!
- Zasto onda odlazite?
- Ne mogu da podnesem ovaj haos, ove izlive mrznje, odvratni prizor rata. Otici cu u beki miran kutak, na selo. Zivecu od ono malo para sto mi je ostalo dok se ljudi ponovo ne dozovu pameti.”
― Irène Némirovsky, quote from Suite Française

“After the calm comes the storm; it starts out slowly, reaches its peak, then it's over and other periods of calm, some longer, some shorter, come along. It's just been our bad luck to be born in a century full of storms, that's all. They'll die down.”
― Irène Némirovsky, quote from Suite Française

“Un soldato nemico non era mai solo - un essere umano di fronte a un altro - ma portava con sé una folla innumerevole di fantasmi, i fantasmi degli assenti e dei morti. Non ci si rivolgeva a un uomo ma a una moltitudine invisibile; così nessuna delle parole pronunciate era detta semplicemente e come tale ascoltata; si aveva sempre la strana sensazione che a parlare fosse soltanto una bocca, che parlava per tante altre, mute.”
― Irène Némirovsky, quote from Suite Française

“Then a dark shape would glide across the star-covered sky, everyone would look up and the laughter would stop. It wasn't exactly what you'd call fear, rather a strange sadness--a sadness that had nothing human about it any more, for it lacked both courage and hope. This was how animals waited to die. It was the way fish caught in a net watch the shadow of the fisherman moving back and forth above them.”
― Irène Némirovsky, quote from Suite Française

“No one quite knew why, but they felt light-hearted. Maybe it was because of the beautiful weather. The sky, so blue, seemed gently to bow down towards the horizon and caress the earth.”
― Irène Némirovsky, quote from Suite Française

“«Signora, dopo la guerra ritornerò. Mi permetta di tornare. Tutti i nostri contrasti tra Francia e Germania saranno vecchi... dimenticati... per almeno quindici anni. Una sera suonerò alla sua porta. Lei mi aprirà e non mi riconoscerà, perché sarò in abiti civili. Allora io dirò: “Sono... l'ufficiale tedesco... si ricorda? Ora c'è la pace, la felicità, la libertà. La porto via con me”. Partiremo insieme. Le farò visitare molti paesi. Io naturalmente sarò un compositore famoso, e lei sarà bella come adesso...»”
― Irène Némirovsky, quote from Suite Française

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“Deception, as practically manifested, succeeds because of two things. First, the object of deception is convincingly deceptive in its design; i.e., it looks/feels/acts like the real thing. Second, and equally important, the subject of deception must be predisposed to believing that the object of deception is indeed the real thing. These two criteria work in an inverse relationship with each other; a sufficiently deceptive object can convince a skeptical subject, while a subject who sincerely wants to believe will be able to overlook even gross flaws in the object onto which he or she confers belief.”
― John Scalzi, quote from The Android's Dream

“If you've a notion of what man's heart is, wouldn't you say that maybe the whole effort of man on earth to build a civilization is simply man's frantic and frightened attempt to hide himself from himself? That there is a part of man that man wants to reject? That man wants to keep from knowing what he is? That he wants to protect himself from seeing that he is something awful? And that this 'awful' part of himself might not be as awful as he thinks, but he finds it too strange and he does not know what to do with it? We talk about what to do with the atom bomb...But man's heart, his spirit is the deadliest thing in creation. Are not all cultures and civilizations just screens which men have used to divide themselves, to put between that part of themselves which they are afraid of and that part of themselves which they wish, in their deep timidity, to try to preserve? Are not all of man's efforts at order an attempt to still man's fear of himself?”
― Richard Wright, quote from The Outsider

“Blood in the water I sing,
and one who shed it:
deadliest hunger I sing, and one who fed it-
weaving the ancient-most tale
of the Sea's sending:
singing the tragedy,
singing the joy unending
This is our shame-
this is the whole Ocean's glory:
this is the Song of the Twelve.
Hark to the story!
Hearken, and bring it to pass:
swift lest the sorrow
long ago laid to it's rest
devour us tomarrow! ”
― Diane Duane, quote from Deep Wizardry

“afternoon and the furniture is all assembled.”
― Elizabeth Chadwick, quote from Lady of the English

“You don't really keep vigil; it keeps you-suspended in awkward silence and dead air-desperate for anything at all to stir some hope out of these murky waters and make things vital again.”
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