The Book of Mother Quotes

“The truth of a life is the fiction that sustains it.”
― Violaine Huisman, The Book of Mother

“The biographical elements that served as her history, or her mythology even, didn’t need to be accurate in order to be true. They really took place in her past as she recalled it. The truth of a life is the fiction that sustains it.”
― Violaine Huisman, The Book of Mother

“But if there are two things in this world that one can safely say are imperfect, that inevitably fall short, they are love and language. Words—besmirched by centuries of misuse, worn out by clichés, arbitrary—are always traitors.”
― Violaine Huisman, The Book of Mother

“With this linguistic infantilization I set up a barrier in words. I placed limits where we were so lacking in them, rules where there were never any.”
― Violaine Huisman, The Book of Mother

“Of course, she had told me the story of her life in great and contradictory detail, but to give shape to her I had to imagine her, interpret her. I had to become the narrator of her story in order to give her back her humanity.”
― Violaine Huisman, The Book of Mother

“Papa organized his books neither alphabetically nor by theme, nor by author nor genre, but by their size and color. The books had to look lovely lined up on the shelves, and he collected them avidly, he bought cases of them wholesale, because they went well together, because they harmonized elegantly, like the entirety of the Soleil collection, those gorgeous hardcover volumes bound in solid-colored canvas, and about which Gallimard, in their promotional leaflet, says: as the sun is the pride of the planets, the books in this collection, all in octavo format, will be the pride of your home library.”
― Violaine Huisman, The Book of Mother

“Maman considérait l'intelligence livresque comme la forme de compétence intellectuelle la plus ras des pâquerettes. N'importe qui pouvait lire des livres et répéter des citations comme un abruti à tout bout de champ. Ce qui comptait ce n'était pas d'accumuler du savoir, c'était d'en faire quelque chose, de s'en nourrir pour mieux comprendre le monde, d'en retirer de l'empathie pour l'espèce humaine, une vue d'ensemble, d'élargir l'horizon de sa conscience.”
― Violaine Huisman, Fugitive parce que reine

“La suite on la connaît, dans des détails qui ont échappé à l’oubli. Qu’est-ce qu’on garde d’une vie ? Comment la raconter ? Qu’en dire ? Est-ce qu’une vie compte autrement que dans l’enfantement ou la création ? Quelle vie vaut la peine d’être retenue ? De qui se souvient-on ? De qui se souviendra-t-on ?”
― Violaine Huisman, Fugitive parce que reine

“Mais l’extase ne saurait durer. Le propre du ravissement est de se manifester dans l’éphémère, au point culminant de l’effusion et de l’effervescence, au paroxysme d’un élan qui ne peut se maintenir en lévitation permanente, il faut bien atterrir, et dans la vie il y a des hauts et des bas, on ne peut pas tout le temps rester perché sur les cimes de l’orgasme.”
― Violaine Huisman, Fugitive parce que reine

“La mamma non conosceva la discesa morbida, la pista verde per lei non esisteva, se andava bene era rossa incendio, se andava male nero estintore. Allora non restava che vedere se si poteva andare più in alto, se si poteva ancora salire finché il cielo era azzurro.”
― Violaine Huisman, Fugitive parce que reine

“Colava a picco, senza più legami all'infuori delle due figlie impotenti che la guardavano andare a fondo insieme ai sacchi della spazzatura pieni di vestiti e di scarpe, che si inabissavano come la sua mente.”
― Violaine Huisman, Fugitive parce que reine