68 Quotes by Georges Simenon

I would like to carve my novel in a piece of wood. My characters – I would like to have them heavier, more three-dimensional... My characters have a profession, have characteristics; you know their age, their family situation, and everything. But I try to make each one of those characters heavy, like a statue, and to be the brother of everybody in the world.

The fact that we are I don’t know how many millions of people, yet communication, complete communication, is completely impossible between two of those people, is to me one of the biggest tragic themes in the world.

He had read endless books, he had digested them, pondered over them. Day by day, year after year, he had turned over all the problems of human beings. Yet there were all sorts of simple things he didn’t know how to do: he couldn’t even walk into an inn and sit down at a table.

Aveva comunque il fascino di certi tisici: lineamenti delicati, pelle trasparente, labbra sensuali e insieme beffarde.

The weather was so contrary and fierce that the rain wasn’t mere rain or the wind freezing wind – this was a conspiracy of the elements.

He distrusted ideas, as they were always too rigid to reflect reality, which, as he knew from experience, was very fluid.

The poor are used to stifling any expression of their despair, because they must get on with life, with work, with the demands made of them day after day, hour after hour.

There’s no skill and no grace to it, but you.

We’re a bit like criminal lawyers. We’re the public face of things, but it’s the civil lawyers who do the serious work, in the shadows.