How were you supposed to feel when you adored the novels of Jules Verne, Maupassant, Dostoevsky, Flaubert, Simenon and loads of others who then turned out to be complete bastards?

There is something irrational about reading. Before you read a book, you can know immediately whether or not you are going to like it, just as with people, you can tell just from looking at them whether or not you’ll be their friend. You smell it, you sniff it, you wonder whether it’s worth spending time in its company. The pages of a book have an invisible alchemy that imprints itself on our brain. A book is a living creature.

Only amnesiacs have no regrets.

I hated wasting my time. The only thing that seemed worthwhile to me was reading.

No one can tell the difference between tears and raindrops.

In due course, I came to classify writers into two categories: those who enabled you to arrive on time and those who caused you to be late. The Russian authors earned me a whole string of detentions.

We always fear losing our memory, yet it’s the source of our troubles. Happy people forget.

Literature is not just stories. It’s based on truth.

Les hommes ne pleurent pas, les héros encore moins.

A quoi servait un ami s'il ne vous tendait pas la main le jour où vous en avez besoin?