“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… — Jean-Christophe Valtat Copy Share Image
“I didn't like what that word-'childhood'-conjured up, or rather, I didn't like the way most people use it: that presumption of innocence and starry-eyed wonder. The only good thing about childhood is that no one really remembers it, or rather, that's the only thing about it to like: this forgetting. What else could possibly lie beneath that blissful oblivion but… — Jean-Christophe Valtat Copy Share
“But if neither sadness or rage could unite us, I didn't know what could - the more I wanted to identify with her, the more I identified with myself; and the more I tried to understand her, the less, necessarily, I succeeded: the failure of an intelligent mind to grasp feeblemindedness was dark and deep, no less than the failure… — Jean-Christophe Valtat Copy Share
“I heard a song that nailed it: "And if the day came when I felt a natural emotion / I'd get such a shock I'd probably lie / in the middle of the street and die." When were these so-called natural emotions and why were they worth more than the others? Hadn't I already begun to suspect that with feelings,… — Jean-Christophe Valtat Copy Share
“I dismissed this course of action, sensing my own reserves of strengths, but I experimented with the idea and took it as far as I could in a game I christened Bus Stop: on summer nights, I would stretch out on the road in front of my house, on hot, grainy asphalt scattered with sharp bits of gravel, and watch… — Jean-Christophe Valtat Copy Share
“She was the living effigy of everything we will never be and, in every sense of the word, she was the retard that I was and that I wasn't, she was my vanishing, wasted talent, and I was the price society paid so that I could become what she couldn't. And this was exactly what I was trying to love;… — Jean-Christophe Valtat Copy Share
“She understood nothing, she learned nothing, so she just stood there, lively sometimes, joyful even, a groundless joy that brought tears to their eyes, though they wished they could share these moments with her: her ecstasy over a leaf, which could last for whole minutes at a time, as though it were the most wonderful thing in the world, as… — Jean-Christophe Valtat Copy Share
“Here, too, I recognized-easily, from firsthand experience, since this kind of thing happened at my age-the heat of the moment, the very instant you… — Jean-Christophe Valtat Copy Share Image
“The blizzard seemed to be dying down, and it was now possible to enjoy the sight of the buildings and embankments and bridges smothered… — Jean-Christophe Valtat Copy Share Image
“When in doubt, do what they do in books, was one of Gabriel's secret mottos and - that rarest of things - a principle… — Jean-Christophe Valtat Copy Share Image
“The notion of this powerful childhood gaze was all the more specious given that adults, in the name of that very spontaneity, subjected chidren… — Jean-Christophe Valtat Copy Share Image
“It was the French of the Normans that, grafting itself onto the barbaric Saxon tongue, gave it its most magnificent blossoming. And, in these… — Jean-Christophe Valtat Copy Share Image
“Don't we all discover, at some stage or another that there are some things we'll never get any better at, even though we have… — Jean-Christophe Valtat Copy Share Image
