27 Quotes by Christian Bobin

It is as if the angels had just done their laundry and, owning no other wealth than love, they are always clothed in the same light, worn transparent from so many washings.

A writer is anyone who follows only the truth of who they are, without ever relying on anything other than the poverty and solitude of that truth. In this respect, children and women in love are born writers.

Life in society is when everyone is there and no one is present. Life in society is when everyone obeys what no one wants. Writing is a way of escaping this impoverishment, a variation on solitude like love or gambling – a principle of insubordination, a virtue of childhood.

You can tell who your friends are because they don’t prevent you from being on your own, because they illuminate your solitude without interrupting it.

A painter is someone who wipes the windowpane between the world and us with light, with a rag made of light, soaked in silence.

In such blue beauty you sense the darkness into which the light will soon fall, and in this conjugal life of blue and black you find the one lesson of things that suits you, the proof of a certain excellence in this life where everything is given to us, every instant, blue with black, strength with hurt.

À vingt ans , on danse au centre du monde .À trante, on erre dans le cercle. À cinquante, on marche sur la circonférence , évitant de regarder vers l'extérieur comme vers l'interieur. Plus tard, c'est sans importance , privilège des enfants et des vieillards, on est invisible.

What love is it, then, that has no need of words to call us? In whose image are we made, to take such delight in a simple image, a square of light on a dark wall?

What are they like, writers, in your mind: it may seem strange, but initially it’s not about writing. A writer is someone who struggles with the angels of solitude and truth. A confused struggle, without any clear conclusion.