Laurent Binet > Quotes

“The dead are dead, and it makes no difference to them whether I pay homage to their deeds. But for us, the living, it does mean something. Memory is of no use to the remembered, only to those who remember. We build ourselves with memory and console ourselves with memory.”
― Laurent Binet, HHhH

“How many forgotten heroes sleep in history's great cemetery?”
― Laurent Binet, HHhH

“Memory is of no use to the remembered, only to those who remember. We build ourselves with memory and console ourselves with memory.”
― Laurent Binet, HHhH

“What would you do if you ruled the world?” The gigolo replied that he would abolish all laws. Barthes said: “Even grammar?”
― Laurent Binet, The Seventh Function of Language

“I’m fighting a losing battle. I can’t tell this story the way it should be told. This whole hotchpotch of characters, events, dates, and the infinite branching of cause and effect - and these people, these real people who actually existed. I’m barely able to mention a tiny fragment of their lives, their actions, their thoughts. I keep banging my head against the wall of history. And I look up and see, growing all over it - ever higher and denser, like a creeping ivy - the unmappable pattern of causality ... How many forgotten heroes sleep in history's great cemetery?”
― Laurent Binet, HHhH

“This scene is not really useful, and on top of that I practically made it up. I don't think I'm going to keep it.”
― Laurent Binet, HHhH

“…the thread of knowledge, once you pull at it, continues unraveling on its own.”
― Laurent Binet, HHhH

“Η μνήμη είναι παντελώς άχρηστη γι'αυτούς που τιμά, χρήσιμη όμως γι'αυτόν που τη χρησιμοποιεί.”
― Laurent Binet

“Sometimes, after all, there is a bit of justice in this mean, cruel world.”
― Laurent Binet, HHhH

“No, it's not invented! What would be the point of 'inventing' Nazism?”
― Laurent Binet, HHhH

“Glory to the logos, my friends! Long live dialectics! Let the party begin! May the verb be with you!”
― Laurent Binet, The 7th Function of Language

“Je me souviens d'une interminable digression d'au moins quatre-vingts pages, dans Notre-Dame de Paris, sur le fonctionnement des institutions judiciaires au Moyen Age. J'avais trouvé ça très fort. Mais j'avais sauté le passage.”
― Laurent Binet, HHhH

“It's risky to try to determine the moments when a person's life is changed forever. I don't even know if such moments exist.”
― Binet Laurent

“The homosexuals are the new Jesuits.”
― Laurent Binet, The 7th Function of Language

“There are some who went off in search of unicorns, but found only rhinoceros.”
― Laurent Binet, The Seventh Function of Language

“Spinoza fucks Hegel up the arse! Spinoza fucks Hegel up the arse! Down with dialectics!”
― Laurent Binet, The Seventh Function of Language

“«Los que han muerto, han muerto, y a ellos les es indiferente que se les rinda algún homenaje. Si hay alguien para quien eso tiene algún significado, es para nosotros, para los vivo. La memoria carece de utilidad para aquellos a quienes honra, pero sirve de mucho a quien se sirve de ella. Con ella me construyo, y con ella me consuelo»”
― Laurent Binet, HHhH

“You had to choose between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor. You will have war.”
― Laurent Binet, HHhH

“A ce degré de bêtise politique, la trahison devient presque une œuvre d'art.”
― Laurent Binet, HHhH

“Je retiens du troisième débat cette phrase de François Hollande à propos des médecins qu'on ne peut pas contraindre à aller s'installer en banlieue (ou à la campagne): "Franchement, vous pensez qu'on peut obliger quelqu'un qui a fait des études à aller travailler là où il ne veut pas ?"
J'ai envie de lui dire : oui, on peut, ça s'appelle un prof.”
― Laurent Binet, Rien ne se passe comme prévu

“Eco listens with interest to the story of a lost manuscript for which people are being killed. He sees a man walk past holding a bouquet of roses. His mind wanders for a second, and a vision of a poisoned monk flashes through it.”
― Laurent Binet, La Septième Fonction du langage

“The old man rubbed his hands: ‘Ah! A meta-subject! Using language to discuss language, there’s nothing better. I adore that’.”
― Laurent Binet, The Seventh Function of Language

“As Umberto Eco might say: for communicating, language is perfect; there could be nothing better. And yet, language doesn’t say everything. The body speaks, objects speak, history speaks, individual or collective destinies speak, life and death speak to us constantly in a thousand different ways. Man is an interpreting machine and, with a little imagination, he sees signs everywhere”
― Laurent Binet, The Seventh Function of Language

“Il me fallut attendre deux ou trois ans pour réellement prendre conscience de ce que j’avais toujours soupçonné : que cette histoire dépassait en romanesque et en intensité les plus improbables fictions.”
― Laurent Binet, HHhH

“That scene, like the one before it, is perfectly believable and totally made up”
― Laurent Binet, HHhH

“«Cuántos héroes olvidados duermen en el gran cementerio de la Historia»”
― Laurent Binet, HHhH

“We always fail to talk about love’. He quickly scans the text – it’s about Stendhal. Simon is moved by the thought of Barthes sitting at his desk, thinking about Stendhal, about love, about Italy, completely unaware that every hour spent typing this article was bringing him closer to the moment when he would be knocked over by a laundry van.”
― Laurent Binet, The Seventh Function of Language

“«Dejando aparte toda ficción más o menos ingeniosa, dudo mucho que el destino de una nación, y más aún el del mundo entero, dependa nunca de un solo hombre»”
― Laurent Binet, HHhH

“If Barthes, along with Bachelard, is one of those who have done most to enrich criticism during the last thirty years, it is not as a theoretician of a still hazy semiology, but as the champion of a new pleasure in reading.”
― Laurent Binet, The Seventh Function of Language

“Hitler vildi sýna hvað það kostaði að ögra Þriðja ríkinu og Lidice fór með hlutverk hins friðþægjandi fórnarlambs. En með þessum viðbrögðum hafði hann gert mjög alvarleg mistök. Hitler og aðrir í yfirstjórn nasista höfðu fyrir löngu misst alla tilfinningu fyrir meðalhófi og gerðu sér því enga grein fyrir þeirri heimsathygli sem eyðileggingin í Lidice myndi fá.”
― Laurent Binet, HHhH