Philippe Besson > Quotes

“The question that imposed itself: Why me?
The image doesn't fit: my thick glasses, my stretched-out blue Nordic sweater, the student head slaps, the too-good grades, the feminine gestures. Why me?
He says: Because you are not like all the others, because I don't see anyone but you and you don't even realize it.”
― Philippe Besson, « Arrête avec tes mensonges »

“Il me rend à la solitude. La plus profonde, celle qu'on ressent au cœur d'une foule.”
― Philippe Besson, « Arrête avec tes mensonges »

“(I correct myself because I've just been lying. Of course, it took time, a lot of time, before I admitted that everything was lost, before I decided to say goodbye forever. I kept hoping for a sign. I thought of initiating another meeting, I started letters that I never sent. Desire does not go out like a match, it extinguishes slowly as it burns into ash. In the end I gave up on all possibility of a reunion.)”
― Philippe Besson, Lie With Me

“It was love, of course. And tomorrow, there will be a great emptiness. But we could not continue—you have your life waiting for you, and I will never change. I just wanted to write to tell you that I have been happy during these months together, that I have never been so happy, and that I already know I will never be so happy again.”
― Philippe Besson, Lie With Me

“He groans, no longer able to contain it, a sound that he releases maybe without even realizing it himself; he moves me tremendously. As I've said, nothing in life moves me more than these moments of pure abandon, of self-oblivion.”
― Philippe Besson, Lie With Me

“Desire does not go out like a match, it extinguishes slowly as it burns into ash.”
― Philippe Besson, Lie With Me

“Today, I'd like to slap this seventeen-years old kid, not because of the grades but because of his incessant need to please those who would judge him”
― Philippe Besson, Lie With Me

“We are alone in the world. I've never enjoyed the rain so much.”
― Philippe Besson, Lie With Me

“I want to experience only the moment, not the looming certainty that I will lose that moment, not the certain awareness that, ultimately, this moment must slip from present to past, only the joy of the moment and the graze of memory.”
― Philippe Besson, In the Absence of Men

“His was the first male sex I held in my hand, other than my own. My first kiss was the one he gave me. My first embrace, skin against skin, was with him.”
― Philippe Besson, Lie With Me

“Philippe, I’m going to Spain and I’m not coming back, at least not right away. You are going to Bordeaux and I know it will be only the first step in a long journey. I always knew you were made for somewhere else. Our paths are separating. I know you would have liked for things to be different, for me to say the words that would have reassured you, but I could not, and I never knew how to talk anyway. In the end, I tell myself that you understood. It was love, of course. And tomorrow, there will be a great emptiness. But we could not continue—you have your life waiting for you, and I will never change. I just wanted to write to tell you that I have been happy during these months together, that I have never been so happy, and that I already know I will never be so happy again.”
― Philippe Besson, Lie With Me

“I’m in this state of one-way desire.
I feel this desire swarming in my belly and running up my spine. But I have to constantly contain and compress it so that it doesn’t betray me in front of others. Because I’ve already understood that desire is visible.”
― Philippe Besson, Lie With Me

“He goes back to the books—this crazy number of books in the house neatly lined up or stacked in piles. All of a sudden I see a sort of admiration return to his face, but it’s a painful admiration; what he likes about me is also what keeps me separate from him.”
― Philippe Besson, Lie With Me

“J'ai dix-sept ans. Je ne sais pas que je n'aurai plus jamais dix-sept ans, je ne sais pas que la jeunesse, ça ne dure pas, que ça n'est qu'un instant, que ça disparaît et quand on s'en rend compte il est trop tard, c'est fini, elle s'est volatilisée, on l'a perdue, certains autour de moi le pressentent et le disent pourtant, les adultes le répètent, mais je ne les écoute pas, leurs paroles roulent sur moi, ne s'accrochent pas, de l'eau sur les plumes d'un canard, je suis un idiot, un idiot insouciant.”
― Philippe Besson, « Arrête avec tes mensonges »

“Later I will write about this longing, the intolerable deprivation of the other. I will write about the sadness that eats away at you, making you crazy. It will become the template for my books, in spite of myself. I wonder sometimes if I have ever written of anything else. It’s as if I never recovered from it: the inaccessible other, occupying all my thoughts.”
― Philippe Besson, Lie With Me

“Finally, slowly, I raise my head and lean back on my elbows and take in the sight of him. I'm struck by his voracity. He's like a ravenous child who has just been given food and prefers to choke on it. I'm not sure where this need for another man's sex comes from but I sense that on the other side of all the repression and self-censoring there exists an equally powerful fever.”
― Philippe Besson, Lie With Me

“I say “courage,” but it may be something else. Those who have not taken this step, who have not come to terms with themselves, are not necessarily frightened, they are perhaps helpless, disoriented, lost as one is in the middle of a forest that’s too dark or dense or vast.”
― Philippe Besson, Lie With Me

“We make love without a condom. AIDS is there though. We even know its true identity. It’s no longer referred to as the “gay cancer.” It’s there but we think we are safe from it. We know nothing of the grand decimation that will follow, depriving us of our best friends and old lovers, that will bring us together in cemeteries and cause us to scratch out names in our address books, enraging us with so many absences, such profound loss. It is there but we aren’t afraid yet. We believe that we are protected by our youth. We are seventeen years old. You don’t die when you are seventeen years old.”
― Philippe Besson, Lie With Me

“I think: In the end, he remained hidden all his life. In spite of the great departure, the ambitious effort to forge a new existence, he fell back into all the same traps: shame, the impossibility of sharing a love that endures.

I think of all the men I met in bookstores, men who confided in me about having lied for years and years, before finally resolving to leave everything to start all over again (they will recognize themselves if they read these lines). Thomas never found their courage.

I say “courage,” but it may be something else. Those who have not taken this step, who have not come to terms with themselves, are not necessarily frightened, they are perhaps helpless, disoriented, lost as one is in the middle of a forest that’s too dark or dense or vast.”
― Philippe Besson, Lie With Me

“here are the lost years won back with words,”
― Philippe Besson, In the Absence of Men

“I listen to you, but all I want to remember is your skin, your smell, the life that pulses within you.”
― Philippe Besson, In the Absence of Men

“I've seen the wedding pictures, my mother put them in an album. She looks at them regularly, she must like to remember her youth. (Or else she confuses youth with happiness, as people frequently do.)”
― Philippe Besson, Lie With Me

“A million questions flash through my mind: How did it begin for him? How and at what age did it reveal itself? How is it that no one can see it on him? Yes, how can it be so undetectable? And then: Is it about suffering? Only suffering? And again: Will I be the first? Or were there others before me? Others who were also secret? And: What does he imagine exactly? I don't ask any of these questions, of course. I follow his lead, accepting the rules of the game.

He says: I know a place.”
― Philippe Besson, Lie With Me

“Because you will leave and we will stay.”
― Philippe Besson

“I realize that this is what it means to be lovers: using the same words to speak of the same things though one has never heard the other use them; these random similarities, this remarkable intimacy.”
― Philippe Besson, In the Absence of Men

“I add: It was then that we lost touch, he and I. These last words are articulated with the least possible affect, as if life is just like that sometimes, you spend time together and then lose touch and life goes on—as if there were no breaks from which you never quite recover.”
― Philippe Besson, Lie With Me

“I must remember the awkwardness, too, the botched gestures, the abruptness, the missed beats, because these too are signs of love.”
― Philippe Besson, In the Absence of Men

“Je sais que Thomas n'a consenti à cette unique photo que parce qu'il avait compris (décidé) que c'était notre dernier moment ensemble. Il sourit pour que j'emporte son sourire avec moi.”
― Philippe Besson, « Arrête avec tes mensonges »

“He tells me something I did not know: that I will leave.”
― Philippe Besson

“C'était de l'amour évidemment. Et demain, ça sera un grand vide.”
― Philippe Besson, Lie With Me