Sophie Divry > Quotes

“I prefer the company of books. When I'm reading, I'm never alone, I have a conversation with the book. It can be very intimate. Perhaps you know this feeling yourself? The sense that you're having an intellectual exchange with the author, following his or her train thought and you accompany each other for weeks on end.”
― Sophie Divry, Signatura 400

“Book and reader, if they meet up at the right moment, it can make sparks fly, set you alight, change your life. It can, I promise you.”
― Sophie Divry, The Library of Unrequited Love

“That's what sofas are for: sit down, drink a cup of tea, talk of literature. At least that's how I see it.”
― Sophie Divry, Signatura 400

“To know your way round a library is to master the whole of culture, i.e. the whole world.”
― Sophie Divry, Signatura 400

“Love, for me, is something I find in books. You're never alone if you are surrounded by books”
― Sophie Divry, The Library of Unrequited Love

“I prefer the company of books. When I’m reading, I’m never alone, I have a conversation with the book. It can be very intimate.”
― Sophie Divry, The Library of Unrequited Love

“The only thing that consoles me is to be surrounded by people as depressed as I am. The readers down here, they're seriously depressed and that cheers me up. You yourself for instance, if I can put this politely, you don't exactly look like a bundle of laughs. No, don't pretend, I can see right through you.”
― Sophie Divry, The Library of Unrequited Love

“D'un œil sévère, tel un général d'armée s'adonnant à la décimation, je scrutai mon studio à la recherche d'une source potentielle de liquidités. Les objets tremblaient sous mon regard. Pas moi ! Pas moi ! semblaient-ils me dire. Le sort tomba sur le plus jeune : un grille-pain offert à noël et qui ayant adopté les mœurs locales, lisait, le ventre vide, un volume de Jean Racine. Je m'approchai de lui. A ses côtés, la bouilloire électrique poussa un soupir de soulagement. Le grille-pain, comprenant son sort, s'accrocha en pleurant à sa prise électrique. -Quel est mon crime ? Pourquoi m'assassiner ? Qu'ai-je fait ? A quel titre ? Qui te l'a dit ?”
― Sophie Divry, Quand le diable sortit de la salle de bain

“I prefer the company of books.”
― Sophie Divry

“...he never so much as looks at me. He just sits there reading his old history books, that really gets me. I ought to go up to him, I really feel this, I should say, Martin, it's so stupid reading all those books. Don't fool yourself, how many of these wretched books do you think you know? Go on, you've got plenty of intelligence, so let's say you read two books a week, for fifty years. In your lifetime, you'll have read how many? Five thousand? That's nothing. Nothing at all, compared to what we have here: two hundred and fifty thousand, seven hundred different books. And in the National Library, they've got fourteen million. We're just cockroaches. So we'd do better to have a bit of fun, look at each other, talk and reproduce, don't you think? If you like, we can go to Versailles, together, any time at all, we can go wherever you want to go, to some beach somewhere, I'll be your Pompadour and we'll love each other until the end of love, hand in hand, we'll gaze at the sea, the sea that begins and ceases and then again begins, the pounding of the surf, the flow of water, the flow of light coming in new every day, fresh surges from the deep, the tide will carry us off, and the flow of paper, every year fifty thousand new titles, fifty thousand books fighting for the chance to come swell our groaning bookshelves, and every year they make me more aware of my limited span, my old age and my insignificance.”
― Sophie Divry, The Library of Unrequited Love

“To all those men and women who will always find a place for themselves in a library more easily than in society, I dedicate this entertainment.”
― Sophie Divry, The Library of Unrequited Love

“And in a library, one should never draw attention to oneself.”
― Sophie Divry, The Library of Unrequited Love

“People apologize too much, everyone's afraid of giving offence and it leads to literature being written for babies. Low-brow rubbish. That's not the way to become an adult.”
― Sophie Divry, The Library of Unrequited Love

“When I'm reading, I'm never alone, I have a conversation with the book.”
― Sophie Divry, The Library of Unrequited Love

“Culture for rich people doesn't come till later, it creeps up on them, and it's not well regarded.”
― Sophie Divry, The Library of Unrequited Love

“De toute façon, qu'est ce qu'un Américain sinon un Européen qui a raté le bateau du retour ?”
― Sophie Divry

“Being a librarian isn't an especially high-level job, I can tell you. Pretty close to being in a factory. I'm a cultural assembly line worker.”
― Sophie Divry, The Library of Unrequited Love

“...my colleagues upstairs, in their huge ground floor space with their big windows and perfectly ordered shelves, they're so comfortable sitting there alongside their coffee machines, that they actually talk out loud about how nice it would be in a library without readers. Like some teacher's dream of a school with no pupils. But what would be the point of us then? Oh, yes, it would be in perfect order. A mathematical masterpiece, really shipshape, our library. But what would be the point if nobody came along to disturb it? ...that's all I do want, to be asked a question, to be disturbed, just a bit.”
― Sophie Divry, The Library of Unrequited Love

“Saber orientarse en una biblioteca es dominar la cultura en su conjunto y, por tanto, el mundo. Y no estoy exagerando.”
― Sophie Divry

“La culture, c'est un effort permanent de l'être pour échapper à sa vile condition de primate sous-civilisé.”
― Sophie Divry, The Library of Unrequited Love

“I prefer the company of books. When I'm reading, I'm never alone, I have a conversation with the book. It can be very intimate. Perhaps you know this feeling yourself? The sense that you're having an intellectual exchange with the author, following his or her train of thought and you can accompany each other for weeks on end.”
― Sophie Divry, The Library of Unrequited Love

“Saborear un café cuando estás en el paro, se convierte en una ocupación preciosa.”
― Sophie Divry, Cuando el diablo salió del baño