"An entire life spent reading would have fulfilled my every desire; I already knew that at the age of seven. The texture of the world is painful, inadequate; unalterable, or so it seems to me. Really, I believe that an entire life spent reading would have suited me best. Such a life has not been granted me..."

“From the amorous point of view Véronique belonged, as we all do, to a sacrificed generation. She had certainly been capable of love; she wished to still be capable it, I'll say that for her; but it was no longer possible. A scarce, artificial and belated phenomenon, love can only blossom under certain mental conditions, rarely conjoined, and totally opposed to the freedom of morals which characterizes the modern era. Véronique had known too many discothéques, too many lovers; such a way of life impoverishes a human being, inflicting sometimes serious and always irreversible damage. Love as a kind of innocence and as a capacity for illusion, as an aptitude for epitomizing the whole of the other sex in a single loved being rarely resists a year of sexual immorality, and never two. In reality the successive sexual experiences accumulated during adolescence undermine and rapidly destroy all possibility of projection of an emotional and romantic sort; progressively, and in fact extremely quickly, one becomes as capable of love as an old slag. And so one leads, obviously, a slag's life; in ageing one becomes less seductive, and on that account bitter. One is jealous of the younger, and so one hatest hem. Condemned to remain unvowable, this hatred festers and becomes increasingly fervent; then it dies down and fades away, just as everything fades away. All that remains is resentment and disgust, sickness and the anticipation of death.”

“You get used to terrorist attacks. France will hold on. The French will hold on, without even needing a “sursaut national,” a national pushback reflex. They’ll hold on because there’s no other way, and because you get used to everything. No human force, not even fear, is stronger than habit.”

“To begin with Tisserand appeared to be interested in a twenty-something brunette, a secretary most like. I was highly inclined to approve of his choice. On the one hand the girl was no great beauty, and would doubtless be a pushover; her breasts, though good-sized, were already a bit slack, and her buttocks appeared flaccid; in a few years, one felt, all this would sag completely. On the other hand her somewhat audacious get-up unambiguously underlined her intention to find a sexual partner: her thin taffeta dress twirled with every movement, revealing a suspender belt and minuscule g-string in black lace which left her buttocks completely naked. To be sure, her serious, even slightly obstinate face seemed to indicate a prudent character; here was a girl who must surely carry condoms in her bag.”

“On my return I sensed that something new was in the offing. A girl was sitting at the table next to mine, alone. She was much younger than Véronique, she might have been seventeen; that aside, she horribly resembled her. Her extremely simple, rather ample dress of beige did not really show off the contours of her body; they scarcely had need of it. The wide hips, the firm and smooth buttocks; the suppleness of the waist which leads the hands up to a pair of round, ample and soft breasts; the hands which rest confidently on the waist, espousing the noble rotundity of the hips. I knew it all; all I had to do was close my eyes to remember. Up to the face, full and candid, expressing the calm seduction of the natural woman, confident of her beauty.”

“Anything can happen in life, especially nothing.”

“The absence of the will to live is, alas, not sufficient to make one want to die.”