Jean-Claude Izzo Quotes & Sayings

Happiness. One day. Ten thousand years ago. — Jean-Claude Izzo

I felt suffocated. And alone. More alone than ever. Every year, I ostentatiously crossed out of my address book any friend who'd made a racist remark, neglected those whose only ambition was a new car and a Club Med vacation, and forgot all those who played the Lottery. I loved fishing and silence. Walking the hills. Drinking cold Cassis, Lagavulin, or Oban late into the night. I didn't talk much. Had opinions about everything. Life and death. Good and evil. I was a film buff. Loved music. I'd stopped reading contemporary novels. More than anything, I loathed half-hearted, spineless people. — Jean-Claude Izzo

Killing was easy. Dying was something else. — Jean-Claude Izzo

I don't like answering private questions. The answers are often ambiguous and can be interpreted in different ways. Even when the other person is close to you. — Jean-Claude Izzo

...I understand where you're coming from. I know it isn't just a question of revenge. It's the feeling there are some things you can't let pass. If you did, you wouldn't be able to look at yourself in the mirror afterwards. — Jean-Claude Izzo

Why was it so difficult to make new friends once you were past forty Was it because we didn't have dreams anymore, only regrets? — Jean-Claude Izzo

So much violence. If God existed, I'd have strangled him on the spot. Without batting an eyelid. And with all the fury of the damned. — Jean-Claude Izzo

Days are only beautiful early in the morning. I should have remembered that. Dawn is merely an illusion that the world is beautiful. When the world opens its eyes, reality reasserts itself, and you're back with the same old shit. — Jean-Claude Izzo

Ordinary French people. Citizens of fear. — Jean-Claude Izzo

I'd spent half of my life crying, the other half refusing to cry — Jean-Claude Izzo

It's at moment of misfortune that we remember we're all exiles. — Jean-Claude Izzo

The sensuality of desperate lives. Only poets talk like that. But poetry has never had an answer for anything. All it does it bear witness. To despair. And desperate lives. — Jean-Claude Izzo

The one thing I could give them was a smile. I've always been good at smiles. — Jean-Claude Izzo

Sometimes, all it takes is one gesture, one word, to change the course of someone's life. Even if you know it won't last forever. — Jean-Claude Izzo

Nobody was speaking. Only the cicadas continued their whine, indifferent to human tragedies. — Jean-Claude Izzo

Pleasure involves respect, and respect starts with words. — Jean-Claude Izzo

Marseilles isn't a city for tourists. There's nothing to see. Its beauty can't be photographed. It can only be shared. It's a place where you have to take sides, be passionately for or against. Only then can you see what there is to see. And you realize, too late, that you're in the middle of a tragedy. An ancient tragedy in which the hero is death. In Marseilles, even to lose you have to know how to fight. — Jean-Claude Izzo

Dawn is merely an illusion that the world is beautiful. — Jean-Claude Izzo

I was the last, the sole survivor. The most honorable thing a survivor could do was survive. If you stayed on your feet, stayed alive, you were the winner. — Jean-Claude Izzo