Patrick Modiano Quotes

My wife's a lot younger than me ... thirty years difference . . . You should never marry a woman a lot younger than you ... Never ...

~ Patrick Modiano

I noticed a phenomenon that doesn't often happen toa man: several women turned round as he passed them.

~ Patrick Modiano

Many years afterwards, we attempt to solve puzzles that were not mysteries at the time and we try to decipher half-obliterated letters from a language that is too old and whose alphabet we don't even know.

~ Patrick Modiano

Did you see her again in France? I asked him.”“No. When I got to France, she was already dead. She committed suicide ...”“Why?”“She often told me she was frightened of getting old...

~ Patrick Modiano

But I am a patient man. I can wait for hours in the rain.

~ Patrick Modiano

When he was younger, he used the slightest opportunity to slip away from people, without his being able to understand very clearly why he did so: a longing to break free and to breathe in the fresh air?

~ Patrick Modiano

Something—he wondered later if it was simply his youth—something that had weighed upon him until that moment broke off him, the way a piece of rock slides slowly into the sea and disappears in a spray of foam.

~ Patrick Modiano

Yes, this man had the persistence of an insect.

~ Patrick Modiano

One should never expect anyone to reply to one's questions.

~ Patrick Modiano

Finally, the horizon stretched out infinitely before me and I felt utterly content looking at stars from afar and trying to make out all the variable, temporary, extinguished or faded stars. I was nothing in this infinity, but I could finally breathe.

~ Patrick Modiano

That is her secret. A poor and precious secret that not even the executioners, the decrees, the occupying authorities, the Depot, the barracks, the camps, History, time-everything that defiles and destroys you-have been able to take away from her.

~ Patrick Modiano

Nice is a city of ghosts and specters, but I hope not to become one of them right away.

~ Patrick Modiano

No. She told me she was going to marry him, to get French nationality . . . She was obsessed with getting a nationality...

~ Patrick Modiano