Le Divorce Quotes

“One is never as happy as one thinks, nor as unhappy as one hopes.”
― Diane Johnson, Le Divorce

“If you did get divorced, would you go back to America?” I asked Roxy on the way home. “No, of course not,” she said vehemently. “Everything makes me happy here. Except, well, you know—the situation. But the buildings. The buses. I even love the pigeons with their little red feet. My heart goes out to the spindly ones. Some pigeons don’t thrive as well as others. Sometimes I drop a piece of my croissant for them. I try to give it to the spindly ones before the fat ones see. But people stare at you so outraged. Did you know they have a sports club where they actually catch the pigeons? Tammy de Bretteville told me about it. Then they let them out, old fat street pigeons, and as they flutter lethargically up, the French shoot them for target practice. That’s their idea of sport. I was struck dumb when I heard this. It wasn’t even for reducing the population of pigeons, which you could possibly understand. It’s some deficiency in sensibility.” She must be really depressed, I thought, to be raving on like this about pigeons. “It’s better than shooting people, like we do at home,” I pointed out.”
― Diane Johnson, Le Divorce

“Yet—some Frenchman had written—“absence diminishes commonplace passions and enhances great ones.”
― Diane Johnson, Le Divorce

“Well, their piety is more evolved,” said Mrs. Pace. “In America we have only two forms, as Matthew Arnold said: the bitter and the smug. In France, it appears, there is a third type, the worldly.”
― Diane Johnson, Le Divorce