Jonathan

“I know that I am a sensualist.
If I have such a love for the memory of my father, if I can never separate myself from his image, if time cannot cut the thread, it is because in the experiences of every single day I realize all that he has done for me. He was the first to recognize my sensuousness. He was the first to see, with his gray eyes, that sensuousness that made me touch a wall and imagine the roughness like porous skin. That sensuousness that prevented me from learning music, putting a higher price on the intoxication of listening than on the joy of being skilful, that sensuousness that made me like a drop of water pierced by the sun, pierced by the shapes and colors in the world, bearing in truth, like a drop of water, the form, the color, the sound, the sensation, physically in my flesh.”
― Jean Giono, Blue Boy

“The angel!
It is the child of our flesh. It is molded by the hands of God: yes, and by our own. All those keen little hands of our eyes and ears, all those sensitive little hands by which our blood touches the world, as a child touches an orange; those little burning hands of our lips, the black hand of our spleen, the purple hand of our liver, the broad hand of our lungs, the musician hand of our heart, the laborer in mortar that toils in our belly, and the maker of wings that flaps gently like a fish between our legs, or throbs like a warm little frog: these are our hands.
And the angel is there, quietly seated at the summit of our neck, between our two ears.”
― Jean Giono, Blue Boy

“Where I made a mistake, was when I wanted to be good and helpful. You will make a mistake, like me.”
― Jean Giono, Blue Boy

“Franchesc's stories never had any point or ending. They would wander at random like pigeons. They would fly, calling, in all directions, and the house was henceforth inhabited by these screaming tales. They never died. Sometimes they were found long after in some dark corner. There they were waiting, and sometimes they would leap up at one.”
― Jean Giono, Blue Boy