Georges Simenon

We live in a time when writers do not always have barriers around them

— Georges Simenon

A novelist is a man who doesn't like his mother.

— Georges Simenon

The place smelled of fairgrounds, of lazy crowds, of nights when you stayed out because you couldn't go to bed, and it…

— Georges Simenon

I would like to carve my novel in a piece of wood.

— Georges Simenon

I would like to carve my novel in a piece of wood. My characters—I would like to have them heavier, more three-dimensional…

— Georges Simenon

“When he went out it was freezing, and a pale winter sun was rising over Paris. No thought of escape had as…

— Georges Simenon

If your vision of the world is of a certain kind you will put poetry in everything, necessarily.

— Georges Simenon

For 30 years I have tried to make it understood that there are no criminals,

— Georges Simenon

I write fast, because I have not the brains to write slow.

— Georges Simenon

Writing is not a profession but a vocation of unhappiness.

— Georges Simenon

I adore life but I don't fear death. I just prefer to die as late as possible.

— Georges Simenon

We are all potentially characters in a novel--with the difference that characters in a novel really get to live their lives to…

— Georges Simenon

I am at home everywhere, and nowhere. I am never a stranger and I never quite belong.

— Georges Simenon

“He now understood deathbed dramas. Everybody thinks about death. But only one person thinks about it for himself. The others know that…

— Georges Simenon

Writing is not a profession but a vocation of unhappiness. I don't think an artist can ever be happy.

— Georges Simenon

Trotsky rises to give me his hand, then sits at his desk, gently allowing his regard to light on my person.

— Georges Simenon

The fact that we are I don't know how many millions of people, yet communication, complete communication, is completely impossible between two…

— Georges Simenon

“What Zograffi would have to realize was that Elie had come to the end, and there was no farther-on for him. Nothing.…

— Georges Simenon