“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… — Jean-Christophe Valtat Copy Share Image
“In English sometimes they call a mentally disabled person a retard, and there is a kind of accidental poetry in naming a human being with this quality of latency or absence, like a clock left behind in an empty room,… — 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… — Jean-Christophe Valtat Copy Share Image
“But if neither sadness or rage could unite us, I didn't know what could - the more I wanted to identify with her, the… — Jean-Christophe Valtat Copy Share Image
“I heard a song that nailed it: "And if the day came when I felt a natural emotion / I'd get such a shock… — Jean-Christophe Valtat Copy Share Image
“I dismissed this course of action, sensing my own reserves of strengths, but I experimented with the idea and took it as far as… — Jean-Christophe Valtat Copy Share Image
“She was the living effigy of everything we will never be and, in every sense of the word, she was the retard that I… — Jean-Christophe Valtat Copy Share Image
“She understood nothing, she learned nothing, so she just stood there, lively sometimes, joyful even, a groundless joy that brought tears to their eyes,… — Jean-Christophe Valtat Copy Share Image
“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
“In English sometimes they call a mentally disabled person a retard, and there is a kind of accidental poetry in naming a human being… — Jean-Christophe Valtat Copy Share Image
“Clusters of distant lights was the view of Mankind that he liked the best. The lights had the archaic charm of little fires on… — Jean-Christophe Valtat Copy Share Image
“He considered each and every second as if he'd never encountered one before, as if the time it kept was a permanent surprise.” — Jean-Christophe Valtat Copy Share Image
