15 Quotes by Jean-Christophe Valtat

Vassily cleared his throat, probably impatient with Gabriel's bookshelf manners. 'You'll have to excuse me,' Gabriel said, putting back the booklet, 'I have a severe addiction to ink.''Don't we all?' Vassily nodded. 'Thank God we have other addictions to assuage it a little.

They were working hard at their own myth.

Clusters of distant lights was the view of Mankind that he liked the best. The lights had the archaic charm of little fires on a plain, and the frailty about them, if it did not excuse anything, at least explained a lot of Man's stubborn ruthlessness. Mankind had not started the mess that was life, after all. And on the whole, it had been an interesting species to be a part of, the girls especially, as long as you remembered to watch your back.

I heard there was a riot.''There was a demonstration, which I think is different. It was peaceful until it was interrupted.'Mason seemed to be thinking hard about it.'What sort of demonstration?''Hmm... A new kind. It looked poetical at first but then became rather poletical.

It was the French of the Normans that, grafting itself onto the barbaric Saxon tongue, gave it its most magnificent blossoming. And, in these new countries, where both English and French are intertwined again, it is as if English were bathing itself in the fountain of its own youth, and as if French were remembering the buried treasures it had thought forgotten.

This isn't the time for bravado, Mr. Orsini,' he said.Brentford couldn't help himself. 'No, it isn't,' he said. 'Perhaps you could come back later?

Could it be, God forbid, that nationality is only a superficial, insignificant layer of the onion that is your being? What would you think of the man who would say of himself 'I am an overcoat' just because he happened to be wearing one?

I have heard about your gifts myself, Miss Roth,' read the subtitle under Brentford's awkward mumble.

The news took a moment to sink in, probably because there was no bottom for it to alight upon.