Gabrielle Wittkop > Quotes

“For fourteen days, I was unspeakably happy. Unspeakably but not absolutely because, for me, joy never comes without the grief of knowing it is only ephemeral. All happiness carries with it the seed of its own end.”
― Gabrielle Wittkop, The Necrophiliac

“My tailor - a tailor who maintains the devoted manners of a bygone era and who speaks to me in the third person - finally couldn't prevent himself from suggesting a less morose wardrobe for me. "For however elegant, black is sad." And so it's the colour that suits me, for I am also sad.”
― Gabrielle Wittkop, The Necrophiliac

“Not able really to say to him, "I would love your eyes sunken in, your lips silenced, your sex frozen, if only you were dead; unfortunately, you have the bad taste to be alive," I hypocritically added, "But I am not single, and I wouldn't want to give occasion for any complications." Too bad.”
― Gabrielle Wittkop, The Necrophiliac

“Quand je serai la longue chrysalide, pareille à ce mort inconnu fleuri de corolles jaunes et porté comme un arbre vers les bûchers, quand mon front sera de cire, ma chevelure sèche et noyée, mon corps une corne creuse où mugiront les tritons de la mort, quand mes doigts seront gantés de cuir mou, lorsque mes yeux seront de chaux, astéries torturées.”
― Gabrielle Wittkop, Chaque jour est un arbre qui tombe

“Tonight, I went to look for cypripediums at the florist, and with them I decorated my friend Jerome, whose flesh already complements the subtleties of their orchid-green, brown, and violet sulphurs. Both have the same plump brilliance — as if sticky — both achieve that triumphant state of a substance at its peak — at the extreme accomplishment of itself — that precedes effervescence and purification.

Stretched out on his side, Jerome seemed to be sleeping, his sex introduced into the calyx of a cypripedium, whose liquor inundated him, while a cascade of lively flowery odours escaped from the swarthy bruises that marbleised his rose-coloured secret.”
― Gabrielle Wittkop, The Necrophiliac

“All happiness carries with it the seed of its own end.”
― Gabrielle Wittkop

“ll happiness carries with it the seed of its own end.”
― Gabrielle Wittkop, The Necrophiliac

“К несчастью, у вас настолько дурной вкус, что вы до сих пор живы.”
― Габриэль Витткоп, Некрофил

“I don't hate my occupation: its cadaverous ivories, its pallid crockery, all the goods of the dead, the furniture that they made, the tables that they painted, the glasses from which they drank when life was still sweet to them. Truly, the occupation of an antiquarian is a situation almost ideal for a necrophiliac”
― Gabrielle Wittkop, The Necrophiliac

“And me, soon, I will fall into death like Narcissus into his own image.”
― Gabrielle Wittkop, The Necrophiliac

“Always this old and aberrant confusion between two beings so fundamentally opposed as the vampire and the necrophiliac, between the dead that feed off the living and the living who love the dead.”
― Gabrielle Wittkop, The Necrophiliac

“And above all, she had an extraordinary moustache: two black commas, thin and supple, framed her mouth, descending to the bottom of her cheeks, cruel as those of Genghis Khan.”
― Gabrielle Wittkop, The Necrophiliac