Home > Work > The Lost Notebook of Édouard Manet

The Lost Notebook of Édouard Manet QUOTES

The Lost Notebook of Édouard Manet QUOTES

1 " One can paint a moment or time of day. Even the feeling of a moment. It is what Impressionism is--the painting of a moment. But how does one paint movement itself? Paint time passing?

[Édouard Manet] "

― Maureen Gibbon , The Lost Notebook of Édouard Manet

2 " The idea that old men become peaceful or philosophical--what shit. One learns to endure, that is all.

[Édouard Manet] "

― Maureen Gibbon , The Lost Notebook of Édouard Manet

3 " We are all always the heroes of our stories, or the villains--we never play a bit part.

[Édouard Manet] "

― Maureen Gibbon , The Lost Notebook of Édouard Manet

4 " ...that is the way with love affairs--they occupy your mind wholly for a time, and then they become distant countries where you no longer speak the language and have forgotten all the landmarks.

[Édouard Manet] "

― Maureen Gibbon , The Lost Notebook of Édouard Manet

5 " Why does no one tell you that work, not love, is the real salvation?

Because if we told young people how life really was, they would beat us with their fists and ask why we brought them into this world.

[Édouard Manet] "

― Maureen Gibbon , The Lost Notebook of Édouard Manet

6 " ...it seems to me suicide is its own kind of 'death in battle,' and it may stand in for all our sufferings...

People commit suicide when they are at war with sadness, or fear, or loneliness, or pain. When a single blow seems preferable to daily assault. Suicide is not heroic, nor romantic, nor idealistic, but neither is it cowardly or sinful. Made in a fit of passion or very deliberately, it is a choice.

[Édouard Manet] "

― Maureen Gibbon , The Lost Notebook of Édouard Manet

7 " If anything, I have learned that the worst pain never comes when I think it will, and never returns in the exact same way. You go to bed with one pain and wake up with another. It wears as many disguises as a masker at a ball.

[Édouard Manet] "

― Maureen Gibbon , The Lost Notebook of Édouard Manet

8 " ...I believe he meant that my little ink sketch was a good approximation of reality--which is exactly how we appraise art when we are young. We want our horses to look like living beings, a loaf of bread to look edible, and a woman's dress to look like satin. We want a painting or a sketch of a thing to replicate it faithfully. The closer a work of art is to reality, the greater the power of the artist. All of that is perfectly acceptable and right--in children.

[Édouard Manet] "

― Maureen Gibbon , The Lost Notebook of Édouard Manet

9 " ...it is no great task to remember people--the challenge is in forgetting them and allowing one's self to -go on-.

[Édouard Manet] "

― Maureen Gibbon , The Lost Notebook of Édouard Manet

10 " ...how it does rankle to be the 'old,' to be the one who is no longer courted. To be the one that no one tries any longer to please.

[Édouard Manet] "

― Maureen Gibbon , The Lost Notebook of Édouard Manet

11 " Age is so misleading--you are the same on the inside as ever, only your outsides are different. Or, perhaps you have changed, but it is not like the younger self goes away--you just go on adding layers to the onion.

[Édouard Manet] "

― Maureen Gibbon , The Lost Notebook of Édouard Manet

12 " ...it is an achievement, too: to be wholly understood by one person.

[Édouard Manet] "

― Maureen Gibbon , The Lost Notebook of Édouard Manet

13 " Shame and doubt, the two great cripplers...

[Édouard Manet] "

― Maureen Gibbon , The Lost Notebook of Édouard Manet

14 " How is it that strangers sometimes support you more than your friends? No, that is not wholly true--no one could be more loyal than Tonin. Maybe it is simply that you rely so heavily on old friends that their voices in your head begin to sound like your own, and when you hear a new friend's words, they fall like fresh rain.

[Édouard Manet] "

― Maureen Gibbon , The Lost Notebook of Édouard Manet

15 " Hope--I keep saying the word, marveling at it.

Modern and world-weary, we think we are beyond it. Too wise, too jaded, we think we are past such a thing. We know what the world is, what men do to other men, and to women, and what anyone may do to a child. We have seen horrors. Executioners in uniforms. Poverty. Illness.

Then It come with its threadlike feet and delicate wings. It drinks our sweat and tears, and once again we believe things are possible.

[Édouard Manet] "

― Maureen Gibbon , The Lost Notebook of Édouard Manet