Adèle Quotes

“People who are never satisfied destroy everything around them.”
― Sam Taylor (translator) Leïla Slimani, Adèle

“Adèle had a child for the same reason that she got married: to belong to the world and to protect herself from other people. As a wife and mother, she is haloed with a respectability that no one can take away from her. She has built herself a refuge for her nights of anguish and a comfortable retreat for her days of debauchery.”
― Leïla Slimani, Adèle

“She always liked being hungry. Feeling herself bend but not break, hearing her stomach groan emptily and then conquering her need, proving herself above all that. Thinness has become a way of life.”
― Leïla Slimani, Adèle

“Si elle avait dit oui à voix haute, si elle avait accepté de participer de plein gré à la scène d'amour, l'excitation serait retombée. Car ce qui excitait l'âme, c'était justement d'être trahie par le corps qui agissait contre sa volonté, et d'assister à cette trahison (p.125)”
― Leïla Slimani, Dans le jardin de l'ogre

“Love is only patience. A pious, fanatical, tyrannical patience. An unreasonably optimistic patience. We’re not finished.”
― Leïla Slimani, Adèle

“Simone swallows a mouthful of gin and clicks her tongue against her incisor. “People who are never satisfied destroy everything around them.”
― Leïla Slimani, Adèle

“They walk quickly along the street, side by side. They don't touch. They rarely kiss. Their bodies have nothing to say to each other. They have never felt any attraction or even tenderness for each other, and in a way this absence of carnal complicity is reassuring. As if it proves that their union is above all bodily contingencies. As if they have already mourned the loss of something that other couples part with reluctantly, amid tears and rows.”
― Leïla Slimani, Adèle

“She looked down at her belly and then back up at her face. She wondered if she would once again become what she had been before. She was acutely aware of her own metamorphosis. She couldn't have said if this pleased her of if she was feeling nostalgic for the past. But she knew that something inside her was dying.
She had always thought that a child would cure her. She had convinced herself that motherhood was the only way out of her malaise, the sole solution that could end this perpetual flight from herself...”
― Leïla Slimani, Adèle

“A chaque saison, à chaque anniversaire, à chaque événement de sa vie, correspond un amant au visage flou. dans son amnésie flotte la rassurante sensation d'avoir existé mille fois à travers le désir des autres. (p.127)”
― Leïla Slimani, Dans le jardin de l'ogre

“Adèle a fait un enfant pour la même raison qu'elle s'est mariée. Pour appartenir au monde et se protéger de toute différence avec les autres. En devenant épouse et mère, elle s'est nimbée d'une aura de respectabilité que personne ne peut lui enlever. Elle s'est constuit un refuge pour les soirs d'angoisse et un repli confortable pour les jours de débauche (p.35)”
― Leïla Slimani, Dans le jardin de l'ogre

“She holds his face and, under her fingertips, she can feel him surrender. She is stronger than his scruples. Like a rat numbed by the sound of her flute, he will follow her to the end of the world.”
― Leïla Slimani, Adèle

“Les hommes vont croire qu'elle est coquine, leste, facile. Les femmes la traiteront de prédatrice, les plus indulgentes diront d'elle qu'elle est fragile. Ils auront tous tort.”
― Leïla Slimani, Adèle