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

Video

About the author

Popular quotes

“That was how it was, sometimes. You put yourself in front of the thing and waited for whatever was going to happen and that was all. It scared you and it didn't matter. You stood and faced it. There was no outwitting anything. When Almondine had been playful, she had been playful in the face of that knowledge, as defiant as before the rabid thing. Sometimes you looked the thing in the eye and it turned away. Sometimes it didn't.”
― David Wroblewski, quote from The Story of Edgar Sawtelle

“The most direct path to Party was raising pigs. The company had several dozen of these and they occupied an unequaled place in the hearts of the soldiers; officers and men alike would hang around the pigsty, observing, commenting, and willing the animals to grow. If the pigs were doing well, the swine herds were the darlings of the company, and there were many contestants for this profession.

Xiao-her became a full-time swineherd. It was hard, filthy work, not to mention the psychological pressure.

Every night he and his colleagues took turns to get up in the small hours to give the pigs an extra feed. When a sow produced piglets they kept watch night after night in case she crushed them. Precious soybeans were carefully picked, washed, ground, strained, made into 'soybean milk," and lovingly fed to the mother to stimulate her milk.

Life in the air force was very unlike what Xiao-her had imagined. Producing food took up more than a third of the entire time he was in the military. At the end of a year's arduous pig raising, Xiao-her was accepted into the Party.

Like many others, he put his feet up and began to take it easy.

After membership in the Party, everyone's ambition was to become an officer; whatever advantage the former brought, the latter doubled it. Getting to be an officer depended on being picked by one's superiors, so the key was never to displease them. One day Xiao-her was summoned to see one of the college's political commissars.

Xiao-her was on tenterhooks, not knowing whether he was in for some unexpected good fortune or total disaster. The commissar, a plump man in his fifties with puffy eyes and a loud, commanding voice, looked exceedingly benign as he lit up a cigarette and asked Xiao-her about his family background, age, and state of health. He also asked whether he had a fiance to which Xiao-her replied that he did not. It struck Xiao-her as a good sign that the man was being so personal. The commissar went on to praise him: "You have studied Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought conscientiously. You have worked hard. The masses have a good impression of you. Of course, you must keep on being modest; modesty makes you progress," and so on. By the time the commissar stubbed out his cigarette, Xiao-her thought his promotion was in his pocket.”
― Jung Chang, quote from Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China

“I love you." she whispered into the rough wool of his sweater.”
― L.J. Smith, quote from The Awakening / The Struggle

“Do you really think anyone in this world, compares to you in my eyes?”
― S.C. Stephens, quote from Thoughtless

“Fantaseó con una cerilla y un bidón de gasolina.”
― Stieg Larsson, quote from The Millennium Trilogy

Interesting books

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.