82 quotes found
“It was always the same; other people gave up loving before she did. They got spoilt, or else they went away; in any case, they were partly to blame. Why did it happen so? She herself never changed;...”
“It all seemed a hollow sham now - that strict code, that conscientious virtue that condemned her to the sterile joys of pious women! No, no, she'd had enough of that; she wanted to live!”
“She [Nana] listened to his [Steiner's] propositions, turning them down every time with a shake of the head and that provocative laughter which is peculiar to full-bodied blondes.”
“Oh, the fools, like a lot of good little schoolboys, scared to death of anything they've been taught is wrong!”
“All round there was a rising tide of beer, widow Désir's barrels had all been broached, beer had rounded all paunches and was overflowing in all directions, from noses, eyes - and elsewhere. People...”
“In my view you cannot claim to have seen something until you have photographed it.”
“The passion for defiling things was inborn in her. It was not enough for her to destroy them, she had to soil them too.”
“Since the same human mire remains beneath, does not all civilisation reduce itself to the superiority of smelling nice and living well?”
“The critics greeted this book with a churlish and horrified outcry. Certain virtuous people, in newspapers no less virtuous, made a grimace of disgust as they picked it up with the tongs to throw i...”
“Endless love and voluptuous appetite pervaded this stifling nave in which settled the ardent sap of the tropics. Renée was wrapped in the powerful bridals of the earth that gave birth to these dark...”
“The shrub that half concealed her was a malignant plant, a Madagascan tanghin tree with wide, box-like leaves with whitish stems, whose smallest veins distilled a venomous fluid. At a moment when L...”
“There Albine lay, panting, exhausted by love, her hands clutched closer and closer to her heart, breathing her last. She parted her lips, seeking the kiss which should obliterate her, and then the ...”
“And then there are always clever people about to promise you that everything will be all right if only you put yourself out a bit... And you get carried away, you suffer so much from the things tha...”
“She wanted to live, and live fully, and to give life, she who loved life! What was the good of existing, if you couldn't give yourself?”
“Boredom was at the root of Lazare's unhappiness, an oppressive, unremitting boredom, exuding from everything like the muddy water of a poisoned spring. He was bored with leisure, with work, with hi...”
“Élodie, who was rising fifteen, lifted her anaemic, puffy, virginal face with its wispy hair; she was so thin-blooded that good country air seemed only to make her more sickly.”
“If you ask me what I came to do in this world I an artist I will answer you: T am here to live out loud.'”
“He was possessed now with that obsession for the cross in which so many lips have worn themselves away on crucifixes.”
“The Empire was on the point of turning Paris into the bawdy house of Europe. The gang of fortune-seekers who had succeeded in stealing a throne required a reign of adventures, shady transactions, s...”
“In Paris, everything's for sale: wise virgins, foolish virgins, truth and lies, tears and smiles.”
