A Balcony in the Forest Quotes

“On its own, having escaped my grasp, the spool I had loosed was unwinding.”
― Julien Gracq, A Balcony in the Forest

“This stretch through the fogbound forest gradually lulled Grange into his favorite daydream; in it he saw an image of his life: all that he had he carried with him; twenty feet away, the world grew dark, perspectives blurred, and there was nothing near him but this close halo of warm consciousness, this nest perched high above the vague earth.”
― Julien Gracq, A Balcony in the Forest

“Sitting at loose ends beside the little wicker table in his bright, sunny room, looking out over the poplars of the Vienne, he fell back into one of his favourite daydreams about the Roof. Nothing in this war was like any of the others; it was a soft degeneration, a dying twilight of peace indefinitely prolonged—so prolonged that one could dream in spite of oneself, after this strange half-season, this plunge into sleepless nights, each new day attaching itself to the old without any break in continuity.”
― Julien Gracq, A Balcony in the Forest

“Sitting at loose ends beside the little wicker table in his bright, sunny room, looking out over the poplars of the Vienne, he fell back into one of his favourite daydreams about the Roof. Nothing in this war was like any of the others; it was a soft degeneration, a dying twilight of peace indefinitely prolonged—so prolonged that one could dream in spite of oneself, after this strange half-season, this plunge into sleepless nights, each new day attaching itself to the old without any break in continuity.”
― Julien Gracq; Translation From The French Richard Howard, A Balcony in the Forest

“He heard the dog bay two or three times, then the cry of the screech owl at the nearby edge of the forest, then nothing more: the earth around him was as dead as a plain of snow. Life fell back to this sweetish silence, the peace of a field of asphodels, only the faint rustle of blood within the ear, like the sound of the unattainable sea in a shell.”
― Julien Gracq, A Balcony in the Forest