Richard Parry > Quotes

“Here he met Judith Tholon, the woman who was to become the love of his life, but who was married to the keeper of the cemetery. [...] After closing the heavy wrought-iron gates at night, they would wander together amidst the graves under the moonlight.”
― Richard Parry, The Bonnot Gang: The Story of the French Illegalists

“He gave one of his habitual sardonic smiles and, addressing the few men gathered around the guillotine, repeated "It's fine, eh? A man's final agony". Then he too was decapitated.”
― Richard Parry, The Bonnot Gang: The Story of the French Illegalists

“Thus, we have neither to approve nor disapprove of illegal actions. We say: they are logical. The anarchist is always illegal - theoretically. Te sole word 'anarchist' means rebellion in every sense.”
― Richard Parry, The Bonnot Gang: The Story of the French Illegalists

“Vegetarianism was the order of the day, while some comrades also experimented with fruitarianism. As for beverages, tea and coffee were avoided in preference to water, and alcohol was completely shunned. Besides tuberculosis, the other killer disease of the working class was chronic alcoholism. The anarchist attitude was that alcohol dulled the
senses of workers to their exploitation and was therefore another weapon in the arsenal of Capitalism; alcoholism was a sort of materialized form of the Christian-induced altitude of resignation.”
― Richard Parry, The Bonnot Gang: The Story of the French Illegalists

“Lacombe: "I would have liked to eat black bread with black hands, but I was forced to eat white bread with red hands...Fate bears the responsibility of all this. It was the sole set of circumstances which arose, and with which I was faced that made me kill people of my own class, exploited like me, but ignorant and too zealous in defending the interests of their masters. I consider them as guilty as myself. I regret having killed workers, but aren't they made to kill each other patriotically on the battlefield or during strikes?".”
― Richard Parry, The Bonnot Gang: The Story of the French Illegalists

“They shot their way out, leaving three police men dead and two wounded, but in the confusion accidentally shot their own leader.[...] Rather than surrender, the two mend did battle with seven hundred police and dozens of soldiers, dying only when the house caught fire and burnt to the ground.”
― Richard Parry, The Bonnot Gang: The Story of the French Illegalists

“Not long after eight o' clock, the gang's luxury limousine was parked in rue Ordener. "We were fearflully armed", recalled Ganier, "I had no less than six revolvers on me, of which one was butt-mounted witha range of eight hundred meters; my companions each had three, and we had about four hundred rounds in our pockets; we were quite determined to defend ourselves to the death".”
― Richard Parry, The Bonnot Gang: The Story of the French Illegalists

“The individualists' ideal was to live their lives as neither exploiter nor exploited - but how to do that in a society divided in this way? Their answer was for people to take direct action through the reprise individuelle, or in slang, la reprise au tas - taking back the whole heap.”
― Richard Parry, The Bonnot Gang: The Story of the French Illegalists