67 Quotes by Pascal Mercier

That words could cause something in the world, make someone move or stop, laugh or cry: even as a child he had found it extraordinary and it never stopped impressing him. How did words do that? Wasn’t it like magic?

What is it that we call loneliness. It can’t simply be the absence of others, you can be alone and not lonely, and you can be among people and yet be lonely. So what is it?

To live for the moment: it sounds so right and so beautiful. But the more I want to, the less I understand what it means.

Our lives are rivers, gliding free to that unfathomed, boundless sea, the silent grave!

In the years afterward, I fled whenever somebody began to understand me. That has subsided. But one thing remained: I don’t want anybody to understand me completely. I want to go through life unknown. The blindness of others is my safety and my freedom.

Given that we can live only a small part of what there is in us – what happens with the rest?

Loyalty... A will, a decision, a resolution of the soul.

It is not the pain and the wounds that are the worst. The worst is the humiliation.

When we talk about ourselves, about others, or simply about things, we want- it could be said – to reveal ourselves in our words: We want to show what we think and feel. We let other have a glimpse into our soul.