89 Quotes by Louis de Bernières

Psipsina emerged from inside the tunic, and jumped up on the table in order to curl up inside the cap, which had been her favourite resting place ever since she discovered the joys of contortionism; she filled it and overflowed from it in such a tangle and jumble of whiskers, ears, tail and paws that it was impossible to tell which part of her was which, and she slept in it because it reminded her of gifts of salami and chicken skins.

The silver fish flashed in the sun like new knives, transforming their asphyxiation into a display of beauty as they flicked and leapt against each other and died.

That is morality,I make myself imagine that it is personal.

The self-anointed superior races, drunk on Darwin and nationalist hyperbole, besotted with eugenics and beguiled by myth, were winding up machines of genocide that soon would be unleashed upon a world already weary to the heart of such infinite foolery and contemptible vainglory.

It was now possible to wake up in the morning and be amazed and grateful to be yet alive and living in a solid house, and to go to bed at night full of relief at having lived a commonplace and uneventful day.

The first causalities of a religion are the intentions of its founder

Madame will forgive me for not perceiving her busyness. It is a sign of the highest breeding to be able to be busy whilst appearing idle to the uninformed observer.

There is only one thing worse than losing the one you love, and that is losing them without knowing why. If you are a dog, then your master is like a god to you, and the pain of losing him is greater still.

Sergeant Pietro Oliva was a good Catholic. He liked to go into a church and cross himself, genuflect to the alter, and then settle down to a little prayer and contemplation, savouring the coolness, the heavy odours, the darkness, and the sensation of being soaked in the atmosphere of centuries’ worth of devotion that hung in the tenebrous and golden air of churches.