20 Quotes by Édouard Louis

I’ve been trying to construct a memory that would let me undo the past, that would amplify it and destroy it, so that the more I remember and the more I lose myself in the images that remain, the less they have to do with me.

I’m sorry, monsieur, but now this is a criminal proceeding. It’s out of your hands.” That night I didn’t understand how my story could stop belonging to me

You were as much a victim of the violence you inflicted as of the violence you endured.

Macron, Hollande, Valls, El Khomri, Hirsch, Sarkozy, Bertrand, Chirac. The history of your suffering bears these names. Your life story is the history of one person after another beating you down. The history of your body is the history of these names, one after another, destroying you. The history of your body stands as an accusation against political history

You were fascinated by all technological innovations, as if, through the novelty they embodied, you could infuse your own life with a newness to which you were not entitled. You commented, in a voice part envy and part admiration, on ads for new phones, tablets, or computers. You didn’t buy them, they cost too much.

Drinking brought oblivion. The world was responsible, but how could you blame the world, the world that imposed a life that the people around us had no choice but to try to forget — with drinking, by drinking.

What we call history is nothing but the story of the same emotions, the same joys, reproduced across bodies and time

Where is history? The history they taught at school was not your own. We were learning world history, and you were left out.

When December comes, you say you wish the holidays were already over and done with and well behind us, and I think you pretend to hate happiness in order to make yourself believe that, if your life seems an unhappy one, at least you’re the one who chose it. As if you wanted to pretend you had some control over your own unhappiness. As if you wanted to give the impression that, if your life was too hard, you wanted it that way, out of disgust with pleasure, out of a loathing for joy.