Amelie Nothomb Quotes & Sayings

I have a Ph.D. in masturbation. — Amelie Nothomb

Because we don't have much time together, I will give you as much love in a year as I could give you in a lifetime. — Amelie Nothomb

We are wrong to despise the body: it's so much less bad than the soul. Your soul claims to want things that your body refuses. When your soul is as honest as your body, you will be able to say my name. — Amelie Nothomb

As she went on with her labour, she became aware that she had Schubert's Erl-King going around in her head. It wasn't the ideal music for the job. Normally, Pannonique programmed her brain to play symphonies that have her the energy indispensable for such physical labour-Saint-Saens, Dvorak-but now that heart-rending Lied stuck in her skull and sapped her strength. — Amelie Nothomb

Ancient Japanese protocol stipulated that the Emperor be addressed with "fear and trembling". I've always loved the expression, which so perfectly describes the way actors in Samurai films speak to their leader, their voices tremulous with almost superhuman reverence.
So I put on the mask of terror and started to tremble. — Amelie Nothomb

The nature of the epistolary genre was revealed to me: a form of writing devoted to another person. Novels, poems, and so on, were texts into which others were free to enter, or not. Letters, on the other hand, did not exist without the other person, and their very mission, their significance, was the epiphany of the recipient. — Amelie Nothomb

The accountants who spent ten hours a day copying out numbers were, to my mind, victims sacrificed on the altar of a divinity wholly bereft of either greatness or mystery. These humble creatures were devoting their entire lives to a reality beyond their grasp. In days gone by they might have at least believed there was some purpose to their servitude. Now they no longer had any illusions. They were giving up their lives for nothing, and they knew it.
Everyone knows that Japan has the highest suicide rate of any country in the world. What surprised me was that suicides were not more common. — Amelie Nothomb

Society conspires against her from early infancy. Her brain is steadily filled with plaster until it sets: 'If you're not married by the time you're twenty-five, you'll have good reason to be ashamed'; 'if you laugh, you won't look dignified' ; 'if your face betrays your feelings, you'll look coarse'; 'if you mention the existence of a single body hair, you're repulsive' ; 'if a boy kisses you on the cheek in public, you're a whore'; if you enjoy eating, you're a pig'; 'if you take pleasure in sleeping, you're no better than a cow'; and so on.

These precepts would be merely anecdotal if they weren't taken so much to heart. — Amelie Nothomb

If you admire yourself in the mirror, let it be in fear and not delight, because the only thing that beauty will bring to you is terror of losing it. — Amelie Nothomb

Luckily I haven't fallen into the trap, which has claimed so many writers, of living from day to day thinking 'Ah, I'll write a book about that.' — Amelie Nothomb

I glanced at the contents of what I was photocopying. They were the rules of the golf club of which Mister Saito was a member. I started to laugh.
The next minute I felt more like crying, thinking about all the innocent trees that my superior was wasting to chastise me. I imagined the forests of the Japan of my childhood - maples, cedars, and ginkgoes - felled for the sole purpose of punishing a creature as insignificant as myself. I remembered, again, that Fubuki's family name meant forest. — Amelie Nothomb

Fubuki, wouldn't it be a thousand times better to stay unmarried than tie yourself down with some creep? What would you do with a husband like that? And how can you feel ashamed of not marrying one of these men, when you're so sublime, so Olympian? They're almost all shorter than you. Don't you think that's a sign? You're too long a bow for any of these pathetic little shooters. — Amelie Nothomb

My mind was not that of a conqueror, but that of a cow that spends its life chewing contentedly in the meadow of invoices, waiting for the train of eternal grace to pass by. How good it felt to exist without pride of ambition. To live in hibernation. — Amelie Nothomb

More and more I understand that it's very fine not to know where you come from. — Amelie Nothomb

When I want to be incognito, I don't wear any hat. Unfortunately, even without the hat, they now recognise me in Paris. — Amelie Nothomb

Behind every work of art lies the enormous pretension of exhibiting one's vision of the world. If such obvious arrogance is not counterbalanced by the tribulations of doubt, all that remains is a monster who is to art what a fanatic is to faith. — Amelie Nothomb

It's while writing that suddenly a point of view appears: 'So, that's what I really thought about this thing'. Then it feels part of me. — Amelie Nothomb

There is only one key to knowledge, and that is desire. — Amelie Nothomb

You find the most outrageous deviants in the countries with the most authoritarian systems. — Amelie Nothomb

They went on to support their thesis by citing authors with esoteric names, whose works they themselves had not read, a fact which enabled them to speak about them penetratingly. — Amelie Nothomb

People with menial jobs conjure up what Nietzsche calls a background world, forcing themselves to believe in an earthly or heavenly paradise. Their mental Eden is as seductive as their job is repugnant. — Amelie Nothomb

It's true that someone will always say that good and evil don't exist: that is a person who has never had any dealings with real evil. Good is far less convincing than evil, but it's because their chemical structures are different.
Like gold, good is never found in a pure state in nature: it therefore doesn't seem impressive. It has the unfortunate tendency not to act; it prefers, passively, to be seen. — Amelie Nothomb

When you have a lot of success you don't need vanity any more. — Amelie Nothomb

I've noticed it a lot. I'm not someone who revises. It's always the first movement, it's that. It's an instinct. Either it works straight away, or it won't ever work. — Amelie Nothomb

If a writer manages to be fascinating about his own novels, then there are only two possibilities: either he is merely voicing out loud what he wrote in his book, and he is a parrot; or he is explaining interesting things that he didn't discuss in his book, in which case the book in question is a failure since it does not live up to its claims. — Amelie Nothomb

I don't understand. She's always been so friendly toward me."
"Yes, so long as your work consisted of updating calendars and photocopying golf club bylaws."
"But there was no danger of my taking her place!"
"She was never afraid of that."
"Then why denounce me? Why would it upset her if I went to work for you?"
"Miss Mori struggled for years to get the job she has now. She probably found it unbearable for you to get that sort of promotion after being with the company only ten weeks."
"I can't believe it. That's just so ... mean."
"All I can say is that she suffered greatly during the first few years she was here."
"So she wants me to suffer the same fate? It's too pathetic. I must talk to her."
"Do you really think that's a good idea?"
"Of course. How else are we going to work things out if we don't talk?"
"You just talked to Mister Omochi. Does it strike you that things have been worked out? — Amelie Nothomb

Don't you understand that girls die the day they begin puberty ? Worse than that, they die without disappearing. — Amelie Nothomb

I need to be very hungry all the time. I need to be very hungry to write. — Amelie Nothomb

I never even dreamt of being a writer because I didn't feel allowed. When I was a child I was terribly ambitious, but I didn't know at all what this great thing would become. — Amelie Nothomb

Classicism never commits any errors of taste. — Amelie Nothomb

The purpose of the photograph is to reveal the love that is felt in a single image. — Amelie Nothomb

Look around you and look at yourself: the world is swarming with assassins, that is, people who allow themselves to forget those they claimed to love. To forget someone: have you really thought about what that means? Forgetfulness is a gigantic ocean where only one ship sails, the ship of memory. For most human beings, that ship is no more than a miserable tub which takes on water at the slightest opportunity. — Amelie Nothomb

Honor sometimes means doing something very unwise. Behaving like an idiot is better than dishonor. To this day I blush for having chosen sensible restraint over common decency. — Amelie Nothomb

I thought maybe I would become a god, or a goddess, or a president or a Nobel Prize winner. — Amelie Nothomb

Of course you have memories, and these memories are convincing. But it's really at the moment when I write them down - when I write about my relationship with that Japanese boy in Ni d'Eve, Ni d'Adam - that they reach a degree of reality which is incandescent, that I've really conquered a story, understood it and feel that it is really part of me. — Amelie Nothomb

If I knew what I was thinking [ ... ] I would never have become a writer. — Amelie Nothomb

I found out that the question was not 'am I good enough to write?', because of course I am not. The question was, 'am I able to live without writing?'. It is the only question. — Amelie Nothomb

But humankind doesn't give a damn ! The proof of it is that in twenty-four years this novel has been collecting dust in libraries and no one, you hear me, no one has ever even talked to me about it. And that's perfectly normal because, as I told you, no one has read it. — Amelie Nothomb

I eat in a strange way, but I enjoy it. Everything became well when I finally understood that I enjoy being hungry. Normally, I only eat in the evening. — Amelie Nothomb

God isn't chocolate, he's the encounter between chocolate and the palate capable of appreciating it. — Amelie Nothomb

Every existence contains its primal trauma, an event dividing life into a before and an after, a trauma so great that even the most furtive memory of it is enough to make an individual freeze in irrational, incurable, animal terror. — Amelie Nothomb

Japanese women live in fear of making the least sound in a bathroom stall. Japanese men pay no attention to the subject whatsoever. — Amelie Nothomb

Language is accurate: you run for your life. If you are dying, leave. If you are suffering, move. There is no other law, only movement. — Amelie Nothomb

It is too sad . I must speak to him
- The do you really ?
- Sure . How can you expect things to get better , if we do not speak?
- Earlier , you talked to Mr. Omochi . Do you feel that things have thus been arranged?
- What is certain is that if we do not talk , there is no chance to solve the problem.
- What seems more certain is that if we talk, there is serious risk of aggravating the situation. — Amelie Nothomb

What is a flower? A giant sexual organ in its Sunday best. The truth has been known for a long time, yet, over-aged adolescents that we are, we persist in speaking sentimental drives about the delicacy of flowers. We construct idiotic phrases like "So-and-so is in the flower of his youth", which is as absurd as saying "in the vagina of his youth". — Amelie Nothomb

How good it felt to exist without pride or ambition. To live in hibernation. — Amelie Nothomb

I will never be one of the happy stupid that were born somewhere. This way of life is excellent for the imagination. It develops your paranoia. You feel paranoid when you don't understand a country, and being paranoiac is excellent for fiction. — Amelie Nothomb

Are the rules more important to you than friendship?"

" 'Friendship' is a strong word. I'd prefer 'good relationship between colleagues.' "

She proffered this expression with ingenuous, affable calm. — Amelie Nothomb

All forms of beauty are poignant, Japanese beauty particularly so. That lily-white complexion, those mellow eyes, the inimitable shape of the nose, the well-defined contours of the mouth, and the complicated sweetness of the features are enough, by themselves, to eclipse the most perfectly assembled faces. — Amelie Nothomb

I always knew that adulthood didn't count; following puberty, all existence is but epilogue. — Amelie Nothomb