Jean-Christophe Valtat said this quote

It was the French of the Normans that, grafting itself onto the barbaric Saxon tongue, gave it its most magnificent blossoming. And, in these new countries, where both English and French are intertwined again, it is as if English were bathing itself in the fountain of its own youth, and as if French were remembering the buried treasures it had thought forgotten.

~ Jean-Christophe Valtat

Clusters of distant lights was the view of Mankind that he liked the best. The lights had the archaic charm of little fires on a plain, and the frailty about them, if it did not excuse anything, at least explained a lot of Man's stubborn ruthlessness. Mankind had not started the mess that was life, after all. And on the whole, it had been an interesting species to be a part of, the girls especially, as long as you remembered to watch your back.

~ Jean-Christophe Valtat

Vassily cleared his throat, probably impatient with Gabriel's bookshelf manners. 'You'll have to excuse me,' Gabriel said, putting back the booklet, 'I have a severe addiction to ink.''Don't we all?' Vassily nodded. 'Thank God we have other addictions to assuage it a little.

~ Jean-Christophe Valtat

... Paris was no more Babylon than it was New Jerusalem. All cities worthy of that name were both: they were one because they were the other...

~ Jean-Christophe Valtat