A Year in the Merde Quotes

“If they wanted their shit stirred, then stirred their shit was jolly well going to be.”
― Stephen Clarke, A Year in the Merde

“I was also sick of my neighbors, as most Parisians are. I now knew every second of the morning routine of the family upstairs. At 7:00 am alarm goes off, boom, Madame gets out of bed, puts on her deep-sea divers’ boots, and stomps across my ceiling to megaphone the kids awake. The kids drop bags of cannonballs onto the floor, then, apparently dragging several sledgehammers each, stampede into the kitchen. They grab their chunks of baguette and go and sit in front of the TV, which is always showing a cartoon about people who do nothing but scream at each other and explode. Every minute, one of the kids cartwheels (while bouncing cannonballs) back into the kitchen for seconds, then returns (bringing with it a family of excitable kangaroos) to the TV. Meanwhile the toilet is flushed, on average, fifty times per drop of urine expelled. Finally, there is a ten-minute period of intensive yelling, and at 8:15 on the dot they all howl and crash their way out of the apartment to school.” (p.137)”
― Stephen Clarke, A Year in the Merde

“There's no room for human rights in a government waiting room.”
― Stephen Clarke, A Year in the Merde

“heard how badly I mangled French. Even if it was no good for my education, I was delighted to find that”
― Stephen Clarke, A Year in the Merde

“Only the French, I thought, could attain orgasm by listening to themselves. It was self-inflicted oral sex. A DIY blowjob.”
― Stephen Clarke, A Year In The Merde: The pleasures and perils of being a Brit in France

“Words, it seems, are like felt pens. If you don't use them for a while they dry up.”
― Stephen Clarke, A Year in the Merde

“He could have had “dull” tattooed across his forehead, but that would have made him too exciting.”
― Stephen Clarke, A Year in the Merde

“There is a class of tourists who never seem to see the things they're visiting, I thought. They prefer to look at directions to the next place they're not going to look at.”
― Stephen Clarke, A Year in the Merde