xy

@xy, member from Sept. 25, 2023

Favourite quotes (21448)

“Just because life is inelegant doesn't mean we have to behave likewise.”

Françoise Sagan (1935–2004) French writer

Scars on the Soul (1972)

“One is never free except in relation to someone else. And when, the relation is based on happiness, it allows the greatest freedom in the world.”

Françoise Sagan (1935–2004) French writer

Un peu de soleil dans l'eau froide (1969, Sunlight on Cold Water, translated 1971)

“Curiosity is the beginning of all wisdom.”

Françoise Sagan book Dans un mois, dans un an

Dans un mois, dans un an (1957, Those Without Shadows, translated 1957)

“Could you love a woman you didn't respect? Could you worship someone without believeing in her? Could you be madly in love with a woman you didn't admire? Well, you could. Not only that, it might be better that way. Easier. It took Paul almost forty years to learn that carnal platitude. Nevertheless, he always took Sonia to dinners where, sooner or later, her stupidity would explode, with the result that brighter souls would inevitably pick up on it right away and cast a sympathetic, albeit ironical, look in his direction, which only excited him all the more.”

Françoise Sagan (1935–2004) French writer

Un chagrin de passage (1994, A Fleeting Sorrow, translated 1995)

“For me writing is a question of finding a certain rhythm. I compare it to the rhythms of jazz.”

Françoise Sagan (1935–2004) French writer

Paris Review interview (1956)
Context: For me writing is a question of finding a certain rhythm. I compare it to the rhythms of jazz. Much of the time life is a sort of rhythmic progression of three characters. If one tells oneself that life is like that, one feels it less arbitrary.

“The ways of love are all the same, whether infantile, childish, sexual, tender, sadistic, erotic, or whispered. It's simply a question of understanding, of understanding oneself above all: in bed, in broad daylight, madly or not at all, in shadow, in sunlight, in despair or at table. Otherwise, it's no use. Any of it. And the little time we have left for living, while we're still alive, in other words capable of giving pleasure, and the little time we have left for thinking (or pretending to) in this vast, mindless cacophony that daily life has become, ineluctable, uncontrollable, and truly unacceptable to any civilized person, we must make absolutely certain that we share.”

Françoise Sagan (1935–2004) French writer

Scars on the Soul (1972)

“I don’t search for exactitude in portraying people. I try to give to imaginary people a kind of veracity.”

Françoise Sagan (1935–2004) French writer

Paris Review interview (1956)
Context: I don’t search for exactitude in portraying people. I try to give to imaginary people a kind of veracity. It would bore me to death to put into my novels the people I know. It seems to me that there are two kinds of trickery: the “fronts” people assume before one another’s eyes, and the “front” a writer puts on the face of reality.