All Men Want to Know Quotes

“The gay child is not lacking, she is difference, outside of the norm, inside a normality of her own; not until later will she come to understand that her normality marks her out from others, condemns her to secrecy and shame.”
― Nina Bouraoui, All Men Want to Know

“They're the same boys who insult my mother, expose themselves to her, lust after her. I share their violence, but I turn it against myself.”
― Nina Bouraoui, All Men Want to Know

“I watch unseen as she prays, kneeling on her prayer carpet, hands raised. Her fervour is palpable and I'm envious of it. She's part of a world I don't know, a world that seems kinder than mine.”
― Nina Bouraoui, All Men Want to Know

“i wonder who in this crowd is newly in love, who has just been left and who has walked out without a word, who is happy and who sad, who is fearful and who forging confidently ahead, who is hoping for a brighter future. i cross over the seine, i walk beside nameless men and women, mirror images of me. our hearts beat as one, we are one unit. we are alive.”
― Nina Bouraoui, Tutti gli uomini aspirano per natura al sapere

“I write to love and be loved, on the page. I live out my dreams as I write - I have affair after affair, fictional liaisons in which I conquer my fear of women, of the unknown.”
― Nina Bouraoui, All Men Want to Know

“We'll never know what the ingredients of love are, how people are put together', my mother says when I ask her what happiness means to her. 'The truth is that you can never really know another person, there are always surprises, both good and bad: reality sets in, stronger than the relationship itself, stronger than desire, the spell of being in love wears off. You have to be able to accept it: life isn't a dream, we aren't here on this earth for a life of constant pleasure; it's the difficult times that matter, much more than the lighter moments.”
― Nina Bouraoui, Tutti gli uomini aspirano per natura al sapere

“he thought it was raining blood until he saw the corpses impaled on the branches of trees... another man said: "I know who they are, these people, they'll come back, they'll slit the throats of survivors.”
― Nina Bouraoui, All Men Want to Know