François Mauriac > Quotes

“If you would tell me the heart of a man, tell me not what he reads, but what he rereads.”
― François Mauriac

“No love, no friendship, can cross the path of our destiny without leaving some mark on it forever.”
― François Mauriac

“Tell me what you read and I'll tell you who you are" is true enough, but I'd know you better if you told me what you reread.”
― François Mauriac

“To love someone is to see a miracle invisible to others.”
― François Mauriac

“I believe that only poetry counts ... A great novelist is first of all a great poet.”
― François Mauriac

“We know well only what we are deprived of.”
― François Mauriac

“Observe that for the novelist who has remained Christian, like myself, man is someone creating himself or destroying himself. He is not an immobile being, fixed, cast in a mold once and for all. This is what makes the traditional psychological novel so different from what I did or thought I was doing. The human being as I conceive him in the novel is a being caught up in the drama of human salvation, even if he doesn’t know it.”
― François Mauriac

“I write whenever it suits me. During a creative period I write every day; a novel should not be interrupted.”
― François Mauriac

“Il giorno in cui voi non brucerete più d'amore, molti altri moriranno di freddo.”
― François Mauriac

“The sin against nature [is] - compulsory celibacy”
― François Mauriac, Maltaverne: Un adolescent d'autrefois

“By the time dusk fell, he was back in his room. The last of the daylight lay like fine ashes on the roof-tops. He did not light his lamp, but sat by the fireplace in the dark, seeking in the far distance of his past some vague memory of a love-affair, some recollection of a friendship, with which to soften the hard tyranny of isolation.”
― François Mauriac, Young Man in Chains

“La muerte no nos roba los seres amados. Al contrario, nos los guarda y nos los inmortaliza en el recuerdo. La vida sí que nos los roba muchas veces y definitivamente.”
― François Mauriac