228 Quotes by Romain Gary

Quand on a deux corps, il vient des moments où l'on est à moitié.

She would bring him back to us as docile as a sheep. ‘Women,’ I concluded rather bitterly, ‘have at their command certain means of persuasion which the best- organized police forces do not possess.

Look, what do you think it matters to me, all that - all that business of - of the body? Do you suppose I actually picked you, of my own free will? As if I'd gone out shopping and decided you were the best buy for the money? I had no choice at all... You're you, and there's no one, nothing else. We talk about 'falling' in love. Well, I 'fell.

Never say die. You have to be mad, it’s true, to keep going and hope, but the first reptile who dragged his belly out of the water a million years ago to live on land without lungs and tried to breathe all the same — he too was mad. In the end the reptile became a man. We must always try to do the best we can — perhaps one day well become human, who knows.

And I found myself falling off asleep, because in that half-awake state, one’s sensibilities are blunted and happiness can still hover nearby...

His jutting cheekbones and his eyes suggested a Mongol ancestry - one of our conquerors! But the open, tremulous lips had lost their hardness: fear civilizes...

For a few minutes I tried to empty my mind entirely, to concentrate solely on breathing: sometimes it’s useful to rediscover simpler pleasures of life.

They died... Have you ever seen a baby elephant lying on its side, with its trunk inert, gazing at you with eyes in which there seem to have taken refuge all those so highly praised human qualities of which humanity is so largely devoid?

After all,' he said, “I suppose there are things that nothing can kill and that remain forever intact. It’s as if nothing could ever happen to human beings. They’re a species over which it’s not easy to triumph. They’ve a way of rising from the ashes, smiling and holding hands.