Pascal Mercier

We leave something of ourselves behind when we leave a place, we stay there, even though we go away. And there are things in us that we can find again only by going back there.

A feeling is no longer the same when it comes the second time. It dies through the awareness of its return. We become tired and weary of our feelings when they come too often and last too long.

Life is not what we live; it is what we imagine we are living.

In the years afterward, I fled whenever somebody began to understand me. That has subsided. But one thing remained: I don't want anybody to understand me completely. I want to go through life unknown. The blindness of others is my safety and my freedom.

Given that we can live only a small part of what there is in us -- what happens with the rest?

Sometimes, we are afraid of something because we're afraid of something else.

To live for the moment: it sounds so right and so beautiful. But the more I want to, the less I understand what it means.

To understand yourself: Is that a discovery or a creation?

Human beings can't bear silence. It would mean that they would bear themselves.

That words could cause something in the world, make someone move or stop, laugh or cry: even as a child he had found it extraordinary and it never stopped impressing him. How did words do that? Wasn't it like magic?