More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
“People always think that writing a novel begins with an idea. But a novel begins most of all with a desire: the desire to write. A desire that grabs you and that nothing can stop, a desire so strong that you turn your back on everything else. That perpetual desire to write, I call the writer’s sickness. You can have the best plot for a novel, but if you have no desire to write, you’ll get nowhere.”
For a novel to exist, the writer has to push back on the walls of rationality, undo reality, and—especially—create a story where there was none before.”
“Levovitch again,” Macaire groaned, “I hate the man. So perfect. So extraordinary. I want to be him!” “Do you hate him or admire him?” “Do I have the right to hate someone because I admire them so much?” “Yes. It’s called jealousy.”
“You’re sure it’s not too soon?” I asked him again. “It’s June thirtieth and you’re going to publish the book in early September?” “The author doesn’t determine the book’s publication date, nor does the publisher. The book decides when it should be published.”
“Can I offer you one last drink?” I asked as we entered the apartment. “I never refuse a last drink. But that’s the third last glass you’ve offered me.” “You know what they say: quit on an odd number!”
“You could become an important man.” “Importance isn’t tangible. It exists in relation to other people, not within ourselves.”
“So, it’s for the theater that you’re keeping all this old stuff?” “No, these things will all be yours one day.” “And what do you want me to do with them?” “You’ll give them to your children.” “But what will they do with them?” “They’ll give them to their children.” “And then?” “And then they’ll remember me.”
“You’re the devil!” Macaire screamed. “I’m worse than the devil, because I exist.”
“What is a great novel?” “According to Bernard, a great novel is a painting—a world offered to the reader who allows herself to be wrapped up in the immense illusion created by the author’s brushstrokes. The picture shows rain: you feel wet. A cold, snow-covered landscape? You start to shiver. Bernard would say, ‘You know what a great writer is? A painter. In the museum of great writers, to which all bookstores have a key, thousands of paintings await you. If you enter once, you’ll keep going back.’”
But eventually paradise gets monotonous. Eve ended up eating that apple because she was looking for a good reason to leave.
“Well, well,” Macaire said. “Sometimes we can be really dumb.” “No,” Lev said. “When we really want to believe in something, we see what we want to see.”
Surrounded by the birds singing, I suddenly seemed to hear the sound of his voice answering the question that I had asked myself ever since his departure. Where do the dead go? Wherever they can be remembered. Especially in the stars. For they continue to follow us, they dance and shine in the night, just above our heads.
Life is a novel whose conclusion we already know: in the end, the hero dies. The most important thing is not how our story ends, but how we fill the pages. For life, like a novel, must be an adventure. And adventures are life’s vacations.
