Zone Quotes

“.. everything is more difficult once you reach man’s estate, everything rings falser, but sometimes the gods offer you flashes of clairvoyance, moments when you contemplate the whole universe, the infinite wheel of worlds, you see yourself, from high up, for few instants truly before leaving, propelled into the next thing, toward the end…”
― Mathias Énard, Zone

“.. after all a photographer is a kind of spy bought by the highest bidder, a parasite who lives off war without fighting it…”
― Mathias Énard, Zone

“obawiam się że nie zdołam zasnąć pościg zacznie się gdy tylko przestanę uważać ktoś wślizgnie się do mojego snu albo pod powieki i podniesie je tak jak się uchyla okiennicę albo roletę wenecką, dawno nie myślałem o Wenecji, o zielonej wodzie na cyplu della Dogana, o mgłach na Zattere i o przenikliwym zimnie kiedy się patrzy w kierunku cmentarza z Fondamente Nuove, wróciwszy z wojny nie myślałem o cieniach które w Wenecji są winem sączonym już od piątej po południu, stają mi przed oczami słowiańscy skrzypkowie grający dla Japończyków, Francuzi zajęci maskaradą karnawałową i zamożny fryzjer z Monachium który zafundował sobie pałac nad Canale Grande, pociąg rusza znienacka odchylam głowę do tyłu no to jedziemy już tylko pięćset kilometrów do końca świata.”
― Mathias Énard, Zone

“the massacres of others are always less awkward, memory is always selective and history always official,”
― Mathias Énard, Zone

“becoming a man didn’t mean growing up but sharpening yourself, reducing yourself, pruning yourself like a vine or a tree from which you take away the branches little by little, the female part, or the human part,”
― Mathias Énard, Zone

“war was his element, for it was simple, funny, and virile,”
― Mathias Énard, Zone

“Men change. Weapons transform them. Weapons and the illusion that they produce. The false power they give. What you think you can obtain by using them.”
― Mathias Énard, Zone

“Palestinians. Who resuscitated this biblical term, and when? The English probably. Under the Ottomans there was no Palestine.”
― Mathias Énard, Zone

“Palestinians had existed for barely thirty years before they lost their territory and sent a million refugees on the roads.”
― Mathias Énard, Zone

“sometimes you come across a book that resembles you, they open up your chest from chin to navel, stun you (pp 449-450)”
― Mathias Énard, Zone

“... the gods will feast on the smoke of rams and ewes that all these lovely people will offer them, on the Temple Mount three times promised, there where the heads of Palestinian suicide bombers take off for the skies, corks of divine champagne, during the celebration of the end of days, the last fireworks, prefigured by the explosions of war, and it’s no doubt only a question of patience before the universe decides to become infinitesimal again and sucks all these burning memories into nothingness…”
― Mathias Énard, Zone

“... pleasure is a lightning-bolt that leaves no trace…”
― Mathias Énard, Zone