Georges Simenon > Quotes

“Writing is not a profession but a vocation of unhappiness. I don't think an artist can ever be happy.”
― Georges Simenon

“We are all potentially characters in a novel--with the difference that characters in a novel really get to live their lives to the full.”
― Georges Simenon

“It just happened. As though a moment comes when it's both necessary and natural to make a decision that has long since been made. ”
― Georges Simenon

“The place smelled of fairgrounds, of lazy crowds, of nights when you stayed out because you couldn't go to bed, and it smelled like New York, of its calm and brutal indifference.”
― Georges Simenon, Three Bedrooms in Manhattan

“The poor are used to stifling any expression of their despair, because they must get on with life, with work, with the demands made of them day after day, hour after hour.”
― Georges Simenon, Maigret and the Hundred Gibbets

“His mouth open, he fell asleep, because a man always falls asleep in the end. One weeps, one shrieks, one rages, one despairs, and then one eats and sleeps as if nothing had happened.”
― Georges Simenon

“I would like to carve my novel in a piece of wood. My characters—I would like to have them heavier, more three-dimensional ... My characters have a profession, have characteristics; you know their age, their family situation, and everything. But I try to make each one of those characters heavy, like a statue, and to be the brother of everybody in the world.”
― Georges Simenon

“They never addressed each other by name, nor were they in the habit of exchanging endearments. What was the point, since both felt that, in many ways, they were one person?”
― Georges Simenon, Maigret and the Apparition

“When he went out it was freezing, and a pale winter sun was rising over Paris.

No thought of escape had as yet crossed Monsieur Monde's mind.

'Morning, Joseph.'

'Morning, monsieur.'

As a matter of fact, it started like an attack of flu. In the car he felt a shiver. He was very susceptible to head colds. Some winters they would hang on for weeks, and his pockets would be stuffed with wet handkerchiefs, which mortified him. Moreover, that morning he ached all over, perhaps from having slept in an awkward position, or was it a touch of indigestion due to last night's supper?

'I'm getting flu,' he thought.

Then, just as they were crossing the Grands Boulevards, instead of automatically checking the time on the electric clock as he usually did, he raised his eyes and noticed the pink chimney pots outlined against a pale blue sky where a tiny white cloud was floating.

It reminded him of the sea. The harmony of blue and pink suddenly brought a breath of Mediterranean air to his mind, and he envied people who, at that time of year, lived in the South and wore white flannels.”
― Georges Simenon, Monsieur Monde Vanishes

“And Boucard desisted, probably because like everyone else he was deeply impressed by this man who had laid all ghosts, who had lost all shadows, and who stared you in the eyes with cold serenity.”
― Georges Simenon, Monsieur Monde Vanishes

“Human tragedies are always simple when we reconsider them in retrospect.”
― Georges Simenon, Maigret and the Old People

“Questa volta lui fu incapace di girare la testa dall'altra parte, tanto il suo volto lo affascinava. Mai neppure nei momenti in cui i loro corpi erano stati più uniti, l'aveva trovata così bella, così raggiante. Mai aveva visto sulla sua bocca carnosa un sorriso che esprimesse così intensamente il trionfo dell'amore. Mai, con un solo sguardo, si era impossessata di lui in modo così totale.
«Lo vedi, Tony,» gli gridò «non ci hanno separati!».”
― Georges Simenon, The Blue Room

“Why, despite the blinding brightness, did everything look gray? It was as if the painfully sharp lights were helpless to dispel all the darkness the people had brought in from the night outside.”
― Georges Simenon, Three Bedrooms in Manhattan

“Si parte da un dettaglio qualsiasi, talvolta di poco conto, e senza volerlo si giunge a scoprire grandi princìpi.”
― Georges Simenon, The Man Who Watched Trains Go By

“The inspector knew the mentality of malefactors, criminals and crooks. He knew that you always find some kind of passion at the root of it.”
― Georges Simenon, The Late Monsieur Gallet

“Ce n’est pas possible d’éplucher des pommes de terre et de gratter des carottes en combinaison.”
― Georges Simenon, Tout Simenon, Tome 1: La fenêtre des Rouet / La fuite de Monsieur Monde / Trois Chambres à Manhattan / Au bout du rouleau / La pipe de Maigret/Maigret se fâche / Maigret à New-York / Lettre à mon juge / Le destin des Malou

“He distrusted ideas, as they were always too rigid to reflect reality, which, as he knew from experience, was very fluid.”
― Georges Simenon, Maigret and the Lazy Burglar

“It was the serene cheerfulness of a man who has no nightmares, who feels at peace with himself and everyone else. They [Americans] were almost all of them like that. And it definitely got Maigret’s back up. It made him think of clothing that was too neat, too clean, too well-pressed.”
― Georges Simenon, Maigret at the Coroner's

“If I try to define my state as accurately as possible, I'd say that I possessed a warped lucidity. Reality existed around me, and I was in contact with it. I was aware of my actions.”
― Georges Simenon, The Hand

“We’re a bit like criminal lawyers. We’re the public face of things, but it’s the civil lawyers who do the serious work, in the shadows.”
― Georges Simenon, Maigret and the Lazy Burglar

“C'era un'atmosfera da domenica sera, quando ci si sente fiacchi senza aver fatto nulla, invasi da un molle torpore, e i minuti scorrono più lenti che gli altri giorni.”
― Georges Simenon, The Engagement

“The change in the girl's face was more subtle, almost invisible; it was not joy, there was no sparkle, but something like a serene contentment. It was as though she had ripened, as though there were a growing plenitude in her, never there before.”
― Georges Simenon

“She came forward, the outlines of her figure blurred in the half-light. She came forward like a film star, or rather like the ideal woman in an adolescent's dream.”
― Georges Simenon, Night at the Crossroads

“He was a big, bony man. Iron muscles shaped his jacket sleeves and quickly wore through new trousers. He had a way of imposing himself just by standing there.”
― Georges Simenon, Pietr the Latvian

“So, I am not mad, nor am I a sex maniac. Simply, at the age of forty, I have decided to live as I please, not worrying about conventions, or laws, because I have found out, rather late in the day, that nobody observes them and that, until now, I have been duped.”
― Georges Simenon, The Man Who Watched the Trains Go By

“Maigret had often tried to get other people, including men of experience, to admit that those who fall, especially those who have a morbid determination to descend ever lower, are almost always idealists.”
― Georges Simenon, Maigret and the Headless Corpse

“È conoscendo meglio la vittima che in genere si scopre l'assassino.”
― Georges Simenon

“The street sprinkler went past and, as its rasping rotary broom spread water over the tarmac, half the pavement looked as if it had been painted with a dark stain. A big yellow dog had mounted a tiny white bitch who stood quite still.

In the fashion of colonials the old gentleman wore a light jacket, almost white, and a straw hat.

Everything held its position in space as if prepared for an apotheosis. In the sky the towers of Notre-Dame gathered about themselves a nimbus of heat, and the sparrows – minor actors almost invisible from the street – made themselves at home high up among the gargoyles. A string of barges drawn by a tug with a white and red pennant had crossed the breadth of Paris and the tug lowered its funnel, either in salute or to pass under the Pont Saint-Louis.

Sunlight poured down rich and luxuriant, fluid and gilded as oil, picking out highlights on the Seine, on the pavement dampened by the sprinkler, on a dormer window, and on a tile roof on the Île Saint-Louis. A mute, overbrimming life flowed from each inanimate thing, shadows were violet as in impressionist canvases, taxis redder on the white bridge, buses greener.

A faint breeze set the leaves of a chestnut tree trembling, and all down the length of the quai there rose a palpitation which drew voluptuously nearer and nearer to become a refreshing breath fluttering the engravings pinned to the booksellers’ stalls.

People had come from far away, from the four corners of the earth, to live that one moment. Sightseeing cars were lined up on the parvis of Notre-Dame, and an agitated little man was talking through a megaphone.

Nearer to the old gentleman, to the bookseller dressed in black, an American student contemplated the universe through the view-finder of his Leica.

Paris was immense and calm, almost silent, with her sheaves of light, her expanses of shadow in just the right places, her sounds which penetrated the silence at just the right moment.

The old gentleman with the light-coloured jacket had opened a portfolio filled with coloured prints and, the better to look at them, propped up the portfolio on the stone parapet.

The American student wore a red checked shirt and was coatless.

The bookseller on her folding chair moved her lips without looking at her customer, to whom she was speaking in a tireless stream. That was all doubtless part of the symphony. She was knitting. Red wool slipped through her fingers.

The white bitch’s spine sagged beneath the weight of the big male, whose tongue was hanging out.

And then when everything was in its place, when the perfection of that particular morning reached an almost frightening point, the old gentleman died without saying a word, without a cry, without a contortion while he was looking at his coloured prints, listening to the voice of the bookseller as it ran on and on, to the cheeping of the sparrows, the occasional horns of taxis.

He must have died standing up, one elbow on the stone ledge, a total lack of astonishment in his blue eyes. He swayed and fell to the pavement, dragging along with him the portfolio with all its prints scattered about him.

The male dog wasn’t at all frightened, never stopped. The woman let her ball of wool fall from her lap and stood up suddenly, crying out:

‘Monsieur Bouvet!”
― Georges Simenon

“È terribile pensare che siamo tutti uomini, tutti destinati, chi più chi meno, a portare il nostro fardello sotto un cielo sconosciuto, e che non vogliamo fare il minimo sforzo per capirci a vicenda.”
― Georges Simenon, Lettera al mio giudice

“At five-thirty the rain began to fall in great, heavy drops which bounced off the pavement before they spread out into black spots. At the same time thunder rumbled from the direction of Charenton and an eddy of wind lifted the dust, carried away the hats of passers-by who took to their heels and who, after a few confused moments, were all in the shelter of doorways or under the awnings of cafe terraces.

Street pedlars of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine scurried about with an apron or a sack over their heads, pushing their carts as they tried to run. Rivulets already began to flow along the two sides of the street, the gutters sang, and on every floor you could see people hurriedly closing their windows.”
― Georges Simenon, L'Enterrement de Monsieur Bouvet