Amélie Nothomb

Language is accurate: you run for your life. If you are dying, leave. If you are suffering, move. There is no other law, only movement.

It is too sad . I must speak to him- The do you really ?- Sure . How can you expect things to get better , if we do not speak?- Earlier , you talked to Mr. Omochi . Do you feel that things have thus been arranged?- What is certain is that if we do not talk , there is no chance to solve the problem.- What seems more certain is that if we talk, there is serious risk of aggravating the situation.

Society conspires against her from early infancy. Her brain is steadily filled with plaster until it sets: __f you__e not married by the time you__e twenty-five, you__l have good reason to be ashamed_; __f you laugh, you won__ look dignified_ ; __f your face betrays your feelings, you__l look coarse_; __f you mention the existence of a single body hair, you__e repulsive_ ; __f a boy kisses you on the cheek in public, you__e a whore_; if you enjoy eating, you__e a pig_; __f you take pleasure in sleeping, you__e no better than a cow_; and so on.These precepts would be merely anecdotal if they weren__ taken so much to heart.

What is a flower? A giant sexual organ in its Sunday best. The truth has been known for a long time, yet, over-aged adolescents that we are, we persist in speaking sentimental drives about the delicacy of flowers. We construct idiotic phrases like "So-and-so is in the flower of his youth", which is as absurd as saying "in the vagina of his youth".

If a writer manages to be fascinating about his own novels, then there are only two possibilities: either he is merely voicing out loud what he wrote in his book, and he is a parrot; or he is explaining interesting things that he didn't discuss in his book, in which case the book in question is a failure since it does not live up to its claims.

There is only one way to overcome the difficulty of writing, and that is to write. Thought only becomes effective and productive at the time of writing.

My mind was not that of a conqueror, but that of a cow that spends its life chewing contentedly in the meadow of invoices, waiting for the train of eternal grace to pass by. How good it felt to exist without pride of ambition. To live in hibernation.

Behind every work of art lies the enormous pretension of exhibiting one's vision of the world. If such obvious arrogance is not counterbalanced by the tribulations of doubt, all that remains is a monster who is to art what a fanatic is to faith.