David Foenkinos Quotes & Sayings

Markus definitely wasn't comfortable. He was sorry about having long legs; as regrets go, it certainly was a useless one.* Not to mention another fact that amped up his torture: there's nothing worse than being seated next to a woman you're dying with desire to look at. The show was to his left, where she was, not on stage. Not only that, but what was he seeing? It was so-so. The fact that it was a Swedish play wasn't exactly helping matters! Had she done it on purpose? As if that weren't enough, the playwright had studied in Uppsala. Might as well have dinner at his parents'. — David Foenkinos

the fact that he'd never before seen her in the evening. He was just short of being astounded that she could exist at this hour. He must have been the type who thought that beauty gets put in a box at night. But it couldn't be true, no, because there she was, facing him. — David Foenkinos

Although prey to the dictates of physical desire, he remained no less a romantic man, believing that the realm of women could be shrunk to one woman. — David Foenkinos

He still felt just as light-headed, and a loop of the scene of the kiss kept playing in his head. It was already a cult film in his memory. Finally he opened the door to his apartment and found his living room much too small in comparison with his appetite for living. — David Foenkinos

Words do not always need a destination.
We can leave them behind us at the borders of feelings.
Running around headless in the vague zone.
And that is the privilege of artists: to live in confusion. — David Foenkinos

as usual, she wasn't able to live in the moment. Maybe that's what grief is: a permanent disconnect from the here and now. — David Foenkinos

The simplicity of it was disconcerting: a simplicity that made all the other dates they'd had before baffling, those times they'd had to talk or try to be amusing, make an effort to seem like a worthwhile person. The obviousness of it became almost laughable. — David Foenkinos

Time again for the waltz of smiles. Amazing how you sometimes make resolutions, tell yourself everything will be a certain way from now on, and then all it takes is a tiny movement of the lips to shatter your confidence in a certainty that seemed eternal. — David Foenkinos

Definition of the Word Delicate, Since Defining Delicacy Isn't Enough for Understanding Delicacy 1. Subtle and subdued. A delicate flavor. 2. Showing fragility. Delicate crystal. 3. Requiring sensitive or careful handling. Delicate situation. 4. Characterized by subtle judgment, deftness. Delicate chess maneuvers. — David Foenkinos

Most couples love to tell each other their stories and assume their meeting had something exceptional about it; countless pairings formed under the most banal conditions are, all the same, spiced up with details that produce a minor thrill. — David Foenkinos

And then, one morning, you're startled to discover that you no longer feel this terrible burden. What a surprise to notice that the angst has disappeared. Why on that particular day? Why not later, or sooner? It's the totalitarian decision of our body. — David Foenkinos

For years, I took notes.
I pored over her work incessantly.
I quoted or mentioned Charlotte in several of my novels.
I tried to write this book so many times.
But how?
Should I be present?
Should I fictionalize her story?
What form should my obsession take?
I began, I tried, then I gave up.
I couldn't manage to string two sentences together.
At every point, I felt blocked.
Impossible to go on.
It was a physical sensation, an oppression.
I felt the need to move to the next line in order to breathe.

So, I realized that I had to write it like this. — David Foenkinos

Organizing a marriage is like forming a government after a war. — David Foenkinos

There are now little brass plaques on the ground outside this address.
These are Stolpersteine.
Tributes to the victims of the Holocaust.
There are many of them in Berlin, especially in Charlottenburg.
They are not easy to spot.
You must walk with your head down, seeking memories between the cobblestones.
In front of 15 Wielandstrasse, three names can be read.
Paula, Albert, and Charlotte.
But on the wall, there is only one commemorative plaque.
The one for Charlotte Salomon. — David Foenkinos

from Uppsala, a Swedish city that doesn't interest many people. Even the inhabitants of Uppsala* themselves are embarrassed; the name of their city sounds almost like an excuse. Sweden has the highest suicide rate in the world. — David Foenkinos

Every atom of Markus melted into intense pleasure. And at the center of this ecstatic realm, his heart leapt with joy throughout his entire body. — David Foenkinos

Charm took effect, and even progressed. Markus came out of it elegantly. He was smiling with his least Swedish smile possible, almost a kind of Spanish smile. He strung out some tasty anecdotes, skillfully mixed in cultural and personal references, successfully managed transitions from the intimate to the general. He gracefully unfurled a fine piece of engineering known as "man of the world. — David Foenkinos

She even wanted to get drunk. Yet something kept her feet on the ground. She could never truly escape her condition. She could drink as much as she wanted, but it wouldn't change anything. She was just there, in a state of complete lucidity, watching herself perform like an actress on a stage. Splitting herself in two, she was dumbfounded to see the woman she no longer was, someone who could exist in life, who could project appeal. It put all the details of her inability to exist in an even harsher light. — David Foenkinos

Before him stood his wife, and he knew this image was the one that would pass before his eyes at his moment of death. — David Foenkinos

Dictionary Definition of Delicacy 1. The quality or condition of being delicate, fragile, or sensitive. 2. Discretion, tact. — David Foenkinos

Faced with her mother's mood swings, Charlotte is docile.
She tames her melancholy.
Is this how one becomes an artist?
By growing accustomed to the madness of others? — David Foenkinos

Thirteen years separate the death of her mother from that of her aunt.
And another thirteen passed between her mother's death and her grandmother's.
yes, exactly the same time lapse.
And all three died in almost exactly the same way.
A leap into the void.
Death has three different ages.
The girl, the mother, the grandmother.
So no age is worth living.
In the train that rolls toward the camp, Charlotte makes a calculation.
1940 + 13 = 1953.
So 1953 will be the year of her suicide.
If she doesn't die before that. — David Foenkinos

Halina tries to picture the American president seated triumphantly behind his desk some 6,000 kilometers west of them. V-E Day, Truman called it: Victory in Europe. But to Halina, the word victory feels hollow. False, even. here's hardly anything victorious about the ruined Warsaw they left, or about the fact that so much of the family is still missing, or about how all around them in what was once Lodz's massive ghetto, they can feel the ghosts of 200,000 Jews - most of whom, it's rumored, met their deaths in the gas vans and chambers of Chelmno and Auschwitz. — David Foenkinos

Dictionaries stop where the heart starts. — David Foenkinos

Although she didn't know what to say. She was under the impression that she was going to have to go back and start again at zero, even relearn language. Maybe in the end all of them had been right to force her to socialize a bit, to force her to wash, dress, entertain. Her — David Foenkinos

She must disappear for a time from the human surface,
And sacrifice everything for this,
To recreate herself from the depths of her world. — David Foenkinos

We may finally ask ourselves whether coincidence really does exist. Maybe everybody we run into is walking around near us with the undying hope of meeting us? To think of it, it's a fact that they often seem out of breath. — David Foenkinos

Therein lies the magic of our paradoxes: the situation was so uncomfortable that he pulled through with elegance. — David Foenkinos

Now, between them, there was literature. — David Foenkinos

He was alone in the world, and the world was Natalie. Usually — David Foenkinos

Moreover, as usual, she wasn't able to live in the moment. Maybe that's what grief is: a permanent disconnect from here and now. She looked at the games adults played and felt detached. It was easy to tell herself: "I'm not here.". — David Foenkinos

charge of a six-person team that you belong to. You walked in just as I was daydreaming, and I didn't grasp the real situation at that moment." "But that moment was the realest of my life," protested Markus without thinking. It had come right out of his heart. — David Foenkinos

Today, the men from that meeting are frozen in photographs.
They are immortal, or rather: they must never be forgotten.
The villa has become a place of memorial.
I visited it one gloriously sunny day in July 2004.
You can walk through the horror.
The long table used for the meeting is frightening.
As if the objects had taken part in the crime.
The place with forever be charged with terror.
So this is what it means, when a chill runs down your spine.
I had never understood that expression before.
The physical manifestation of an invisible icy finger.
Tracing the vertebrae in your back. — David Foenkinos

Life can be beautiful when you understand the inconvenience of being born. — David Foenkinos

But you need to have lived years in nothingness to understand how a person can suddenly become frightened by a possibility. — David Foenkinos