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1 " A alma de uma grande cidade não se deixa apreender facilmente; é preciso, para se comunicar com ela, termo-nos aborrecido, termos de algum modo sofrido nos lugares que a circunscrevem. "
― Julien Green , Paris
2 " A volte scriveva, ma era un’occupazione che lo stancava un po’, e poi non concepiva l’idea di gustarsi la gioia di pensare mettendo per iscritto le fantasticherie della mente, a meno che quella fatica non gli avesse permesso di guadagnarsi da vivere. Era convinto che in genere le idee più felici non tollerano di essere espresse, giacché perdono tutta la loro originaria freschezza e appassiscono non appena vengono affidate alla penna. (L'inferno) "
― Julien Green , Vertigine
3 " I enter the world called real as one enters a mist. Our life is a book that writes itself and whose principal themes sometimes escape us. We are like characters in a novel who do not always understand what the author wants of them. I don't want to go on playing in a world where everyone cheats. Where everyone cheats - not only men and women, but sometimes even God. "
― Julien Green , Journal
4 " I am probably exaggerating a little, but I owe my equilibrium to ink and paper. "
― Julien Green
5 " Faith means walking on the waters. "
6 " But nowadays my heart is empty and the boxwood has lost its magic scent; yes, absolutely and entirely. The creature that I was no longer exists. When I speak to her she does not understand me; I think of her, already, as of some one I have known but who no longer has any connection with myself. This sort of death of part of oneself strikes terror into my heart.Life presents itself to me as a progressive series of annihilations, until in time one arrives at the general destruction of all memory and the barren slumber of one's conscience. "
― Julien Green , Le Visionnaire
7 " Notre vie est un livre qui s'écrit tout seul. Nous sommes des personnages de roman qui ne comprennent pas toujours bien ce que veut l'auteur. "
8 " The greatest explorer on this earth never takes voyages as long as those of the man who descends to the depth of his heart. "
9 " In growing older, we become our parents. "
10 " Sometimes we do things, without thinking, that make no sense to us until much later, and yet appear to have been prompted by the most alert part of our being. "
11 " A novelist is like a scout commissioned to go and see what is happening in the depth of the soul. He comes back and reports what he has observed. He never lives on the surface but only inhabits the darkest regions "
12 " Copying is out of the question; only fools and impostors copy. No, the thing is to produce something as good, if possible, out of your own resources. And so begins the strange torture of the blank sheet of paper, where you must open a window that is not the one I spotted just now but one equally insistent in its truthfulness. "
13 " Paris is a city that might well be spoken of in the plural, as the Greeks used to speak of Athens, for there are many Parises, and the tourists’ Paris is only superficially related to the Paris of the Parisians. The foreigner driving through Paris from one museum to another is quite oblivious to the presence of a world he brushes past without seeing. Until you have wasted time in a city, you cannot pretend to know it well. The soul of a big city is not to be grasped so easily; in order to make contact with it, you have to have been bored, you have to have suffered a bit in those places that contain it. Anyone can get hold of a guide and tick off all the monuments, but within the very confines of of Paris there is another city as difficult to access as Timbuktu once was. "
14 " What we give the world, we have borrowed from no one; it is ours. It may be taken from us, stolen from us, but imitated? - never. "
15 " On ne sait jamais quand la vie va vous trahir ; inutile de compter sur le lendemain, ni même sur l'heure qui va suivre ; il n'y a de certain que la mort. "
― Julien Green , Léviathan
16 " I knew that we counted little in comparison with the universe, I knew that we were nothing; but to be so immeasurably nothing seems in some way both to overwhelm and at the same time to reassure. Those figures, those dimensions beyond the range of human thought, are utterly overpowering. Is there anything whatsoever to which we can cling? Amid that chaos of illusions into which we are cast headlong, there is one thing that stands out as true, and that is---love. All the rest is nothingness, an empty void. We peer down into a huge dark abyss. And we are afraid. "
― Julien Green , Personal record, 1928-1939
17 " Bom ou mau, aquilo que sai da Paris é Paris, seja uma carta, um pedaço de pão, um par de sapatos ou um poema. "
18 " A cidade, efectivamente, sorri apenas àqueles que se aproximam dela e que deambulam pelas suas ruas; a esses, ela fala numa linguagem tranquilizadora e familiar, mas a alma de Paris só se revela de longe e do alto, e é no silêncio do céu que se escuta o imenso grito patético de orgulho e de fé que ela eleva na direcção das nuvens. "
19 " Things we could not tell each other with the width of the Atlantic between us we communicated from heart to heart in those imaginary conversations. "
20 " ...quando me passeio por Passy parece-me que deambulo por dentro de mim mesmo e que tropeço incessantemente na minha infância. "
