Jean-Claude Izzo

“Να τα βρεις με τη ζωή σημαίνει να τα βρεις με τις αναμνήσεις σου... Ν' αναρωτιέσαι για το παρελθόν δε χρησιμεύει πουθενά. Τις ερωτήσεις πρέπει να τις απευθύνουμε στο μέλλον.”

“Dawn is merely an illusion that the world is beautiful.”

“Killing was easy. Dying was something else.”

“We were all moving to a pre-ordained end. You just had to open the papers and read the international news, or the crime reports. We didn't need nuclear weapons. We were killing each other with prehistoric savagery. We were just dinosaurs, and the worst thing of all was that we knew it.”

“Leila was untouchable. She was in my heart now, and I'd carry her always, on this earth that every day gives men a chance.”

“Happiness. One day. Ten thousand years ago.”

“...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.”

“We fought over a girl's smile, not because of the color of our skins. It created friendships, not hatreds.”

“You ought to get out more. You know, Pérol, we should go out some evening, just you and me. Otherwise, you lose touch with reality. You know what I mean? You lose your sense of reality, and hey presto, you don't know which shelf you left your soul on. The shelf where you put your friends. The shelf where you put your women. Stage right, stage left. Or in the shoebox. You turn around and you find you're stuck in the bottom drawer, with the accessories.”

“The one thing I could give them was a smile. I've always been good at smiles.”

“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. ”

“Ordinary French people. Citizens of fear.”

“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?”

“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.”

“It's at moment of misfortune that we remember we're all exiles.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Nobody was speaking. Only the cicadas continued their whine, indifferent to human tragedies.”

“Pleasure involves respect, and respect starts with words.”

“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.”

“The novels, travel books and poems I read had a particular smell. The smell of cellars. An almost spicy smell, a mixture of dust and grease. Verdigris. Books today don't have a smell. They don't even smell of print.”

“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.”

“Our taste for books came from Antonin, an old second-hand bookseller, an anarchist, whose shop was on Cours Julien. We'd cut classes to go see him. He'd tell us stories of adventures and pirates. The Caribbean. The Red Sea. The South Seas... Sometimes he'd stop, grab a book, and read us a passage. As if to prove that what he was telling us was true. Then he'd give it to us as a present. ”

“After that, we weren't the same anymore. We'd become men. Disillusioned and cynical. Slightly bitter too. We had nothing. We hadn't even learned a trade. No future. Nothing but life. But life without a future is worse than no life at all.”

“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.”

“Marseille ist keine Stadt für Touristen. Es gibt dort nichts zu sehen. Seine Schönheit lässt sich nicht fotografieren. Sie teilt sich mit. Hier muss man Partei ergreifen. Sich engagieren. Dafür oder dagegen sein. Leidenschaftlich sein. Erst dann wird sichtbar, was es zu sehen gibt. Und dann ist man, wenn auch zu spät, mitten in einem Drama. Einem antiken Drama, in dem der Held der Tod ist. In Marseille muss man sogar kämpfen, um zu verlieren.”