Georges Perec Quotes

Question your tea spoons.

It is on a day like this one, a little later a little earlier that you descover without surprise that something is wrong that you don't know how to live and you will never know

The idea occurred to him when he was twenty. At first it was only a vague idea, a question looming — what should I do? — with an answer taking shape: nothing.

What we need to question is bricks, concrete, glass, our table manners, our utensils, our tools, the way we spend our time, our rhythms. To question that which seems to have ceased forever to astonish us. We live, true, we breathe, true; we walk, we go downstairs, we sit at a table in order to eat, we lie down on a bed on order to sleep. How? Where? When? Why? Describe your street. Describe another. Compare.

As the hours, the days, the weeks, the seasons slip by, you detach yourself from everything. You discover, with something that sometimes almost resembles exhilaration, that you are free. That nothing is weighing you down, nothing pleases or displeases you. You find, in this life exempt from wear and tear and with no thrill in it other than these suspended moments, in almost perfect happiness, fascinating, occasionally swollen by new emotions. You are living in a blessed parenthesis, in a vacuum full of promise, and from which you expect nothing. You are invisible, limpid, transparent. You no longer exist. Across the passing hours, the succession of days, the procession of the seasons, the flow of time, you survive without joy and without sadness. Without a future and without a past. Just like that: simply, self evidently, like a drop of water forming on a drinking tap on a landing.

What a marvellous invention man is! He can blow on his hands to warm them up, and blow on his soup to cool it down.

To want nothing. Just to wait, until there is nothing left to wait for. Just to wander, and to sleep. To let yourself be carried along by the crowds, and the streets. To follow the gutters, the fences, the water’s edge. To walk the length of the embankments, to hug the walls. To waste your time. To have no projects, to feel no impatience. To be without desire, or resentment, or revolt.

To write: to try meticulously to retain something, to cause something to survive; to wrest a few precise scraps from the void as it grows, to leave somewhere a furrow, a trace, a mark or a few signs.

It is on a day like this one, a little later, a little earlier, that you discover, without surprise, that something is wrong, that, without mincing words, you don't know how to live, that you will never know." -from "A Man Asleep

This is how space begins, with words only, signs traced on the blank page. To describe space: to name it, to trace it, like those portolano-makers who saturated the coastlines with the names of harbours, the names of capes, the names of inlets, until in the end the land was only separated from the sea by a continuous ribbon of text. Is the aleph, that place in Borges from which the entire world is visible simultaneously, anything other than an alphabet?

A gap will yawn, achingly, day by day, it will turn into a colossal pit, an abyss without foundation, a gradual invasion of words by margins, blank and insignificant, so that all of us, to a man, will find nothing to say.

Vivir es pasar de un espacio a otro sin golpearse

ما يثير انفعالك، ما يخيفك، لكنه أحيانًا يهيجك، ليس الطابع المباغت لتحولك، إنما هو تحديدًا الشعور الغامض والشديد الوطأة أنك لا تعيش تحولًا، أن شيئًا لم يتغير،أنك كنت هكذا على الدوام حتى إن لم تعلم هذا حتى اليوم: ذاك في المرآة المشقوقة ليس وجهك الجديد، إنما الأقنعة هي التي تهاوت، حجرتك جعلتها تنصهر، الخمول جعلها تسيخ، أقنعة الطريق القويم، الأفكار اليقينية الجميلة.

I have neither one nor the other, and that has been going on for so long now that I have stopped wondering whether it is hate or love which gives us the strength to continue this life of lies, which provides the formidable energy that allows us to go on suffering, and hoping.

لم تتعلم شيئا، إلا ما كان من أن العزلة لا تعلّم شيئاً، من أن اللامبالاة لا تعلم شيئا: كانت خدعة مراوغة، وهما آسراً ومفخخاً. كنت وحيداً وهذا كل شيء فكنت تريد حماية نفسك؛ أن تنقطع الجسور بينك وبين العالم إلى الأبد. لكنك ضئيل الشان جدا والعالم كلمة كبيرة جداً: لم تفعل ابداً أي شيء سوى أنك تشردت في مدينة كبيرة.

It seems we only sleep well in our own bed.

Tu as tout à apprendre, tout ce qui ne s'apprend pas: la solitude, l'indifférence, la patience, le silence. Tu dois te déshabituer de tout: d'aller à la rencontre de ceux que si longtemps tu as côtoyés, de prendre tes repas, tes cafés à la place que chaque jour d'autres ont retenue pour toi, ont parfois défendue pour toi, de traîner dans la complicité fade des amitiés qui n'en finissent pas de se survivre, dans la rancoeur opportuniste et lâche des liaisons qui s'effilochent.

From this, one can make a deduction which is quite certainly the ultimate truth of jigsaw puzzles: despite appearances, puzzling is not a solitary game: every move the puzzler makes, the puzzlemaker has made before; every piece the puzzler picks up, and picks up again, and studies and strokes, every combination he tries, and tries a second time, every blunder and every insight, each hope and each discouragement have all been designed, calculated, and decided by the other.

أنت وحيد. تتعلم أن تمشي كرجل وحيد, أن تتسكع, أن تجر قدميك, أن ترى دون أن تنظر, أن تنظر دون أن ترى. تتعلم الشفافيه, الهمود, عدم الوجود. تتعلم أن تكون طيفاً, و أن تنظر للناس كما لو كانوا حجاره

شيء ما يتكسر. شيء ما قد تكسر. لم تعد تشعر بأنك -كيف تقولها- متماسك: شيء ما، فيما كان يبدو لك، فيما يبدو لك، كان حتى حينه قد طمأنك، أشعرك بالدفء في القلب، الشعور بوجودك، تقريبًا بأهميتك، الانطباع بالارتباط، بالاستغراق في العالم، قد بدأ يتملّص منك.

Kayıtsızlık dili geçersiz kılıyor,işaretleri anlaşılmaz hale getiriyor.Sabırlısın ama beklemiyorsun, özgürsün ama seçmiyorsun,müsaitsin ama hiçbir şey seni harekete geçirmiyor. Hiçbir şey istemiyor,hiçbir şey talep etmiyor, hiçbir şeyi dayatmıyorsun.Hiç dinlemeden duyuyor,hiç bakmadan görüyorsun.

Tu n'as rien appris, sinon que la solitude n'apprend rien, que l'indifférence n'apprend rien: c'était un leurre, une illusion fascinante et piégée. Tu étais seul et voilà tout et tu voulais te protéger: qu'entre le monde et toi les ponts soient à jamais coupés. Mais tu es si peu de chose et le monde est un si grand mot: tu n'as jamais fait qu'errer dans une grande ville, que longer sur quelques kilomètres des façades, des devantures, des parcs et des quais. L'indifférence est inutile. Tu peux vouloir ou ne pas vouloir, qu'importe! Faire ou ne pas faire une partie de billard électrique, quelqu'un, de toute façon, glissera une pièce de vingt centimes dans la fente de l'appareil. Tu peux croire qu'à manger chaque jour le même repas tu accomplis un geste décisif. Mais ton refus est inutile. Ta neutralité ne veut rien dire. Ton inertie est aussi vaine que ta colère.

Bir şeyler kırılıyordu, bir şeyler kırıldı. Kendini-nasıl demeli?-dayanıklı hissetmiyorsun artık: Sana bugüne kadar güç veren-öyle sanıyordun, öyle sanıyorsun-,yüreğini ısıtan şey, varoluş duygun,neredeyse önemli olduğun duygusu, dünyaya bağlanma,dünyada kalma duygusu eksikliğini hissettirmeye başlıyor.

Yine böyle bir günde, biraz daha önce, biraz daha sonra, bir şeylerin yolunda gitmediğini, açık konuşacak olursak, yaşamayı bilmediğini, hiç bilmeyeceğini şaşırmadan keşfediyorsun. ____________________ İnsanlardan nefret ettiğin anlamına gelmez bu, ne diye nefret edesin ki? Ne diye kendinden nefret edesin ki? Keşke insan türüne ait olmak, o dayanılmaz ve sağır edici gürültüyü de beraberinde getirmeseydi…

You will never stop seeing yourself. You can do nothing, you cannot escape yourself, you cannot escape your own gaze, you never will be able to: even if you were to fall into a sleep so deep that no shock, no shout, no burning pain could rouse you, there would still be this eye, your eye, that will never close, that will never sleep. You see yourself, you see yourself seeing yourself, you watch yourself watching yourself. Even if you were to wake up, your vision would remain the same, immutable. Even if you managed to grow thousands, billions of extra eyelids, there would still be this eye, behind, which would see you. You are not asleep but sleep will never come again. You are not awake and you will never wake up. You are not dead and even death could never set you free." -from "A Man Asleep

Like the librarians of Babel in Borges’s story, who are looking for the book that will provide them with the key to all the others, we oscillate between the illusion of perfection and the vertigo of the unattainable. In the name of completeness, we would like to believe that a unique order exists that would enable us to accede in knowledge all in one go; in the name of the unattainable, we would like to think that order and disorder are in fact the same word, denoting pure chance. It’s possible also that both are decoys, illusions intended to disguise the erosion of both books and systems. It is no bad thing in any case that between the two our bookshelves should serve from time to time as joggers of the memory, as cat-rests and as lumber-rooms.

Maintenant tu n'as plus de refuges. Tu as peur, tu attends que tout s'arrête, la pluie, les heures, le flot des voitures, la vie, les hommes, le monde, que tout s'écroule, les murailles, les tours, les planchers et les plafonds; que les hommes et les femmes, les vieillards et les enfants, les chiens, les chevaux, les oiseaux, un à un, tombent à terre, paralysés, pestiférés, épileptiques; que le marbre s'effrite, que le bois se pulvérise, que les maisons s'abattent en silence, que les pluies diluviennes dissolvent les peintures, disjoignent les chevilles des armoires centenaires, déchiquettent les tissus, fassent fondre l'encre des journaux; q'un feu sans flammes ronge les marches des escaliers; que les rues s'effondrent en leur exact milieu, découvrant le labyrinthe béant des égouts; que la rouille et la brume envahissent la ville.

People who choose to earn money first, people who put off their real plans until later, until they are rich, are not necessarily wrong. People who want only to live, and who reckon living is absolute freedom, the exclusive pursuit of happiness, the sole satisfaction of their desires and instincts, the immediate enjoyment of the boundless riches of the world [...] such people will always be unhappy. It is true [...] that there are people for whom this kind of dilemma does not arise, or hardly arises, either because they are too poor and have no requirements beyond a slightly better diet, slightly better housing, slightly less work, or because they are too rich, from the start, to understand the import or even the meaning of such a distinction. But nowadays and in our part of the world, more and more people are neither rich nor poor: they dream of wealth, and could become wealthy; and that is where their misfortunes begin." -from "Things: A Story of the Sixties

How can you explain that what he is seeing is not anything horrific, not a nightmare, not something he will suddenly wake from, something he can rid his mind of? How can you explain that this is life, real life, this is what there’ll be every day, this is what there is, and nothing else, that it’s pointless believing something else exists or to pretend to believe in something else, that it’s not even worth your time trying to hide it, or to cloak it, it’s not even worth your time pretending to believe there must be something behind it, or beneath it, or above it? That’s what there is, and that’s all. There are competitions every day, where you Win or Lose. You have to fight to live. There is no alternative. It is not possible to close your eyes to it, it is not possible to say no. There’s no recourse, no mercy, no salvation to be had from anyone. There’s not even any hope that time will sort things out. There’s this, there’s what you’ve seen, and now and again it will be less horrible than what you’ve seen and now and again it will be much more horrible than what you’ve seen. But wherever you turn your eyes, that’s what you will see, you will not see anything else, and that is the only thing that will turn out to be true.

I would like there to exist spaces that are stable, unmoving, intangible, untouched and almost untouchable, unchanging, deep-rooted; places that might be points of reference, of departure, of origin: My birthpalce, the cradle of my family, the house where I may have been born, the tree I may have seen grow (that my father may have planted the day I was born), the attic of my childhood filled with intact memories . . . Such places don't exist, and it's because they do'nt exist that space becomes a question, ceases to be self-evident, ceases to be incorporated, ceases to be appropriated. Space is a doubt: I have constantly to mark it, to designate it, It is never mine, never given to me, I have to conquer it. My spaces are fragile: time is going to wear them away, to destroy them. Nothing will any longer reseble waht was, my memories will betray me, oblivion will infiltrate my memory, I shall look at a few old yellowing photographs with broken edges without recognising them. The words 'Phone directory available within' or 'Snacks served at any hour' will no longer be written up in a semi-circle in white porcelain letter on the window of the little café in the Rue Coquillière. Space melts like sand running through one's fingers. Time bears it away and leaves me only Shapeless shreds: To write: to try meticulously to retain something, to cause something to survive; to wrest a few precise scraps from the void as it grows, to leave somewhere a furrow, a trace, a mark or a few signs. Paris 1973-1974