The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair

by Joël Dicker

Everyone has demons. The question is simply to know up to what point those demons can be tolerated.

Everyone knows how to write, but not everyone is a writer.”

You’re not born a writer; you become one.”

Life is a long drop down, Marcus. The most important thing is knowing how to fall.”

Because this is America’s grand obsession: sex and morality. America is a pecker paradise. And you will see, a few years from now, that no-one will remember that Mr Clinton saved our failing economy, governed expertly with a Republican majority in the Senate, or made Rabin and Arafat shake hands. But everyone will remember the Lewinsky affair, because blow jobs, ladies and gentlemen, remain engraved in people’s memories.

“You’re asking me about love, Marcus, but love is complicated. It is at once the most extraordinary and the worst thing that can happen to you. You’ll discover it for yourself one day. Love can hurt so much. All the same, you should not be afraid of falling, and especially not of falling in love, because love is also very beautiful. But like everything that’s beautiful, it dazzles you and hurts your eyes.”

In case you haven’t noticed, life generally doesn’t have any meaning—unless you strive, every God-given day, to provide it with some.

To be a writer is to be alive.”

“The reason writers are such fragile beings, Marcus, is that they suffer from two sorts of emotional pain, which is twice as much as a normal human being: the heartache of love and the heartache of books. Writing a book is like loving someone. It can be very painful.”

Deep down, I’ve always been a bit of a loner, and suddenly that changed. With Nola, I felt part of a whole, an entity that the two of us formed together. Whenever she wasn’t with me, there was an emptiness inside me, a feeling that something was missing, which I had never experienced before—as if, once she had entered my life, the world could no longer turn properly without her.

We live the life we choose, Marcus.

His heart was pounding; he could feel it reverberate inside his rib cage, in the veins of his hands, in his head … even his fingertips seemed to react to each heartbeat.

When I was with Nola, I felt truly alive. I don’t know how else to explain it to you. Each second I spent with her was a second of life lived as fully as possible. That’s what love is, I think.

That laugh … I have heard it in my head every day for the last thirty-three years. That extraordinary look in her eyes … I can still see it, right in front of me.

And when she wasn’t there, nothing seemed to have any meaning: A day without Nola was a day wasted.

You see, boxing and writing are very similar. You get in the guard position, you decide to throw yourself into battle, you lift your fists, and you hurl yourself at your opponent. A book is more or less the same. A book is a battle.”

As I thought about it, I was overcome by a feeling I had not experienced for a long time: the desire to write. I wanted to write about what I was going through, what I was feeling. Soon my head was overflowing with ideas. It was more than a mere desire; I needed to write.

They would kiss the paper the way they burned to kiss each other.

It was, at once, a beautiful and a tragic scene: Love was their greatest treasure, but they were denied it.

“Marcus, do you know what is the only way to know how much you love someone?” “No.” “By losing them.”

The important thing is not the fall, because falling is inevitable. The important thing is knowing how to get up again.

“In our society, Marcus, the most admired men are those who build bridges, skyscrapers, and empires. But in reality, the proudest and most admirable are those who manage to build love. Because there is no greater or more difficult undertaking.”

All I know is that life is a series of choices, and that you have to keep making them.”

It doesn’t matter if you win or lose. What matters is how you fight between the first bell and the last one.

Writing means being able to feel things more strongly than other people do and to communicate those feelings. Writing means allowing your readers to see things they sometimes can’t see.

“Who dares, wins. Think about that motto, Marcus, whenever you are faced with a difficult choice. Who dares, wins.”

People think they love each other, so they get married. And then one day they discover real love, without meaning to or even realizing it. It hits them right between the eyes. It’s like hydrogen coming into contact with air: There’s a huge explosion and everything gets destroyed. Thirty years of frustrated marriage blown to pieces in a single second, as if a gigantic septic tank, brought to boiling point, explodes, splattering filth all around it. The midlife crisis, the seven-year itch—call it what you want. For me, those are just people who grasp the scale of true love too late, and their life is overturned as a result.”

“Cherish love, Marcus. Make it your greatest conquest, your sole ambition. After men, there will be other men. After books, there will be other books. After glory, there will be other glories. After money, there will be yet more money. But after love, Marcus, after love, there is nothing but the salt from tears.”

Writers have more power in their fingertips than they imagine. All they have to do is close their eyes and they can change an entire lifetime.

“How do you know when a book is finished?” “Books are like life, Marcus. They never really end.”