Hervé Le Tellier > Quotes

“There are some works so luminous...so powerful that they give us strength, and force us to new undertakings. A book can play this role.”
― Hervé Le Tellier

“There are some works so luminous that they fill us with shame for the meager life to which we are resigned, that they implore us to lead another, wiser, fuller life; works so powerful that they give us strength, and force us to new undertakings. A book can play this role.”
― Hervé Le Tellier

“An attentive reader will always learn more, and more quickly, from good authors than from life.”
― Hervé Le Tellier, Enough About Love

“Le vrai pessimiste sait qu'il est déjà trop tard pour l'être.”
― Hervé Le Tellier, L'Anomalie

“She is in love, she craves sugar, eats a dried apricot, another. All at once she is really tired. She will not wait any longer for Romain and goes to bed. She is not guilty because, she keeps telling herself, thrilled, she had no say in it. She falls asleep immediately.”
― Hervé Le Tellier, Enough About Love

“There is something admirable that always surpasses knowledge, intelligence, and even genius, and that is incomprehension. —The anomaly, Victør Miesel”
― Hervé Le Tellier, The Anomaly

“Nostalgia is a villain. It suggests that life makes sense.”
― Hervé Le Tellier, L'Anomalie

“Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions.”
― Hervé Le Tellier, The Anomaly

“But, you see, what I like about you is not that you feel foreign. And I don't think you ever did feel entirely foreign. But I like the fact that something about you still resists, refuses to become familiar, remains invincibly foreign. And it means that when I'm with you, I'm always rubbing up against a foreign element, something mysterious, irreducible, ever present, and full of happiness…It makes the way you walk and some of the things you do feel foreign to me for a moment. Your voice, on the end of the phone, from time to time: foreign. Your perfume, its vetiver fragrance, your own delicate smell: both foreign. Your subtly sinuous thought processes are so foreign to my own meanderings, and yet clearer and sharper. Of course you are not a foreigner, but how I value this foreignness in you. Perhaps keeping that foreign element is the secret.”
― Herve Le Tellier

“No one takes their own life, didn’t they teach you that? There are just tortured souls who escape by killing their torturer.”
― Hervé Le Tellier, The Anomaly

“La religion est un poisson carnivore des abysses. Elle émet une infimie lumière,et pour attirer sa proie,il lui faut baucoup de nuit.”
― Hervé Le Tellier, L'Anomalie

“We want answers for even our tiniest anxieties and a way of conceiving the world without reexamining our values, our emotions, and our actions. Take climate change. We never listen to the scientists.”
― Hervé Le Tellier, The Anomaly

“No author writes the reader's book, no reader reads the author's book. At most, they have the final period in common -- Victor Miesel”
― Hervé Le Tellier, The Anomaly

“The lowest trash always have the option of taking refuge in patriotism.”
― Hervé Le Tellier, The Anomaly

“Penny for them?

I was thinking that the problem with smart people is that they waste too much time wondering if idiots are a little bit right, too.”
― Hervé Le Tellier

“Pero cuando se agotan las pilas del mando a distancia, siempre apretamos más fuerte. Es humano.”
― Hervé Le Tellier, La anomalía

“Malgré tout, je n’aime pas trop ce mot de « destin ». Ce n’est qu’une cible qu’on dessine après coup à l’endroit où s’est fichée la flèche.”
― Hervé Le Tellier, L'Anomalie

“The truth, with love, is that the heart knows straightaway, and shouts it from the rooftops. Of course, you’re not going to come straight out and tell the person you love them. They wouldn’t understand. So, to disguise the fact that you’re already hostage to them, you make conversation.”
― Hervé Le Tellier, The Anomaly

“Since - at least - King Arthur and his knights, the military gent likes to gather in circles, probably because the circle proclaims the equality of merit without hiding anything from the real hierarchies.”
― Hervé Le Tellier, L'Anomalie

“Their message is obscure, but freedom of thought on the internet is all the more complete now that it’s clear that people have stopped thinking.”
― Hervé Le Tellier, The Anomaly

“En additionnant des obscurités individuelles, on obtient rarement une lumière collective.”
― Hervé Le Tellier, L'Anomalie

“When you're in motion, each instantaneous position is unstable. If you want to be in a stable position, just don't move.”
― Hervé Le Tellier, Enough About Love

“spending every day missing a woman who’s no longer there will be less painful than relentlessly desiring one who’s sleeping beside him but is light-years away from him in the tepid indifference of the shadows.”
― Hervé Le Tellier, The Anomaly

“Στο Αρχιπέλαγος Γκαγιόκ των Φιλιππίνων, οι ιθαγενείς ξέρουν να μετράνε μόνο μέχρι το 457. Για το μετά το 457, λένε: "πολλά". Το στοιχείο αυτό μπορεί να ξαφνιάζει, πόσο μάλλον που, όπως και να το κάνουμε, το 456 δεν είναι και λίγο.”
― Hervé Le Tellier, Contes liquides

“Pero amar es no poder evitar que el corazón pisotee a la inteligencia.”
― Hervé Le Tellier, La anomalía

“Ningún autor escribe el libro del lector. Ningún lector lee el libro del autor. A lo sumo pueden coincidir en el punto final.”
― Hervé Le Tellier, The Anomaly

“If the whole of Africa is a hell for homosexuals, Nigeria is its ninth circle. There is the law, which threatens them with fourteen years in prison, there is the police, who chase them and extort money from them, there is a whole population that rejects them, with reluctance and dislike, watered with hatred and rumours by bishops and priests evangelical in the south, and in the north by Muslims who apply Sharia law. Not a day goes by without young people being murdered, lynched, not a day without a singer, an actor, a sportsman, terror in his voice, against being gay.”
― Hervé Le Tellier, L'Anomalie

“God, but stupidity oozes from every corner of a religious mind. Every conviction is a thorn in the side of intelligence.”
― Hervé Le Tellier, The Anomaly

“Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”
― Hervé Le Tellier, The Anomaly

“But love means not being able to stop your heart trampling all over your intelligence.”
― Hervé Le Tellier, The Anomaly