Éric Vuillard

“Don't believe for a minute that this all belongs to some distant past. These are not antediluvian monsters, creatures who pitifully faded away in the 1950s along with the poverty depicted by Rossellini, or were carted off with the ruins of Berlin. These names still exist. Their fortunes are enormous.”
― Éric Vuillard, L'Ordre du jour

“e never fall twice into the same abyss. But we always fall the same way, in a mixture of ridicule and dread. We so desperately want not to fall that we grapple for a handhold, screaming. With their heels they crush our fingers, with their beaks they smash our teeth and peck out our eyes. The abyss is bordered by tall mansions. And there stands History, a reasonable goddess, a frozen statue in the middle of the town square. Dried bunches of peonies are her annual tribute; her daily gratuity, bread crumbs for the birds.”
― Éric Vuillard, The Order of the Day