The Girl Who Reads on the Métro Quotes

“I love books, that’s all.” She could have added: I don’t always like people.”
― Christine Féret-Fleury, The Girl Who Reads on the Métro

“The little girl dipped her pipette in the water, then held it up to the lightbulb dangling over the table.
In the liquid drop that was slowly stretching, she had captured the entire room: the window and its four panes with the waning daylight, the chest covered with a red rug, the sink with the handle of a saucepan poking out, the big photo tacked to the wall showing an almond tree bowed under a storm, its blossoms torn off, blown away, tiny angel flights or sacrificed lives.
'The world's tiny... it's a pity we can't keep droplets for all the beautiful things we see. And for people. I'd love that. I'd put them in...' Zaide broke off, shaking her head. 'No. You can't put them anywhere. But it's beautiful.'
I whispered, 'Yes, the world is beautiful.”
― Christine Féret-Fleury, The Girl Who Reads on the Métro

“One room can contain an entire world.”
― Christine Féret-Fleury, The Girl Who Reads on the Métro

“He was talking about books as if they were alive - old friends, powerful adversaries at times, insolent teenagers and elderly ladies sitting by the fire. In our bookcases? Grumpy wise men and mistresses, uncontrollable passions, future killers, thin paper boys offering their hands to fragile damsels whose beauty grew thin with every description. Some books were wild horses that took you with them in a mad galloping while you were hanging, breathless. Others were like boats sailing softly on a lake lit by the moonlight. And some were prisons.”
― Christine Féret-Fleury, The Girl Who Reads on the Métro

“It must be part of the inescapable human condition--each person ultimately deaf, impervious to other people's emotions, incapable of deciphering gestures, looks, or silences, all condemned to give painful explanations with words that are never the right ones.”
― Christine Féret-Fleury, Fata care citea în metrou

“It takes a little of everything to create a world,' he said placidly. 'Even a world of books.”
― Christine Féret-Fleury, The Girl Who Reads on the Métro

“All the world's diseases—and all the remedies—were concealed between the covers of books. That in books you found betrayal, solitude, murder, madness, rage—everything that could grab you by the throat and ruin your life, not to mention others' lives, and that sometimes crying over printed pages could save a person's life.”
― Christine Féret-Fleury, The Girl Who Reads on the Métro

“O sectă, un soi de temniță fără gratii și fără lacăte, ceva care ți se lipea de piele, se insinua în tine, îți obținea consimțământul, și nu forțat, dar cu ușurare, cu entuziasm, cu impresia că ai găsit în sfârșit o familie, un scop, ceva solid, care nu se va toci, nici nu va dispărea, niste certitudini clare, simple...”
― Christine Féret-Fleury, The Girl Who Reads on the Métro

“Gyvenime niekas mūsų nedrąsina. Mes patys turime semtis drąsos ten, kur mūsų akys arba mūsų entuziazmas, mūsų aistra, mūsų... - kas tik norite - geba jos rasti.”
― Christine Féret-Fleury, The Girl Who Reads on the Métro

“Vienos knygos - tai karštakraujai nedresuoti žirgai, kurie patrakusiai šuoliuodami neša jus tolyn, o jūs užgniaužę kvapą kaip įmanydami kabinatės jiems į karčius. Kitos - laivai, ramiai plaukiojantys ežere mėnesienos naktį. O dar kitos - kalėjimai.”
― Christine Féret-Fleury, The Girl Who Reads on the Métro

“Kiekviena knyga - tai portretas mažiausiai dviem veidais. Vienas veidas - to, kuris ją duoda. Ir veidas žmogaus, kuris ją gauna.”
― Christine Féret-Fleury, The Girl Who Reads on the Métro

“Fallait-il, se demanda-t-elle [...] voyager dans les pays qu’on avait aimés en lisant? Ces pays existaient-ils, d’ailleurs? L’Angleterre de Virginia Woolf avait disparu aussi sûrement que l’Orient de Mille et Une Nuits ou la Norvège de Sigrid Undset. À Venise, l’hôtel où séjournaient les personnages du roman de Thomas Mann ne subsistait plus qu’à travers les somptueuses images de Luchino Visconti. Et la Russie... De la tröika des contes, qui glissait inlassablement dans la steppe, on voyait des loups, des cabanes montées sur des pattes de poule, d’immenses étendues enneigées, des bois noirs pleins de périls, des palais féeriques. On dansait devant le tsar sous les lustres de cristal, on buvait le thé dans des bols d’or, on se coiffait de toques de fourrure (quelle horreur!) faits avec la peau d’un renard argenté.
Que retrouverait-elle de tout cela, si elle prenait l’avion pour visiter l’une de ces parties du monde - contrées confuses, aux frontières mouvantes, où elle avait couvert, en un éclair, des distances presque inconcevables, où elle avait lassé les siècles glisser sur elle, virevolté parmi les constellations, parlé aux animaux et aux dieux, pris le thé avec un lapin, goûté la ciguë et l’ambroisie?”
― Christine Féret-Fleury, The Girl Who Reads on the Métro

“If she had learned one thing, it was this: with books, there were always surprises.”
― Christine Féret-Fleury, The Girl Who Reads on the Métro

“The story of the world as she knew it was one big rumor that some people had taken the trouble to set down in writing, and which would continue to evolve, again and again, until the end.”
― Christine Féret-Fleury, The Girl Who Reads on the Métro

“You've stayed shut up inside with your books for too long. Like him. Books and people need to travel.”
― Christine Féret-Fleury, The Girl Who Reads on the Métro

“she plunged her nose into the fragrant mist, closed her eyes and imagined herself far away, very far away, at one of those Middle Eastern markets that the bombs had reduced to rubble, in one of those gardens that no longer exists except in fairly tales.”
― Christine Féret-Fleury, The Girl Who Reads on the Métro

“When you're drowning you don't choose your lifeline”
― Christine Féret-Fleury, The Girl Who Reads on the Métro