Georges Simenon Quotes

Writing is not a profession but a vocation of unhappiness. I don't think an artist can ever be happy.

We are all potentially characters in a novel--with the difference that characters in a novel really get to live their lives to the full.

It just happened. As though a moment comes when it's both necessary and natural to make a decision that has long since been made.

The place smelled of fairgrounds, of lazy crowds, of nights when you stayed out because you couldn't go to bed, and it smelled like New York, of its calm and brutal indifference.

The poor are used to stifling any expression of their despair, because they must get on with life, with work, with the demands made of them day after day, hour after hour.

His mouth open, he fell asleep, because a man always falls asleep in the end. One weeps, one shrieks, one rages, one despairs, and then one eats and sleeps as if nothing had happened.

They never addressed each other by name, nor were they in the habit of exchanging endearments. What was the point, since both felt that, in many ways, they were one person?

Human tragedies are always simple when we reconsider them in retrospect.

And Boucard desisted, probably because like everyone else he was deeply impressed by this man who had laid all ghosts, who had lost all shadows, and who stared you in the eyes with cold serenity.

I would like to carve my novel in a piece of wood. My characters—I would like to have them heavier, more three-dimensional ... My characters have a profession, have characteristics; you know their age, their family situation, and everything. But I try to make each one of those characters heavy, like a statue, and to be the brother of everybody in the world.

Si parte da un dettaglio qualsiasi, talvolta di poco conto, e senza volerlo si giunge a scoprire grandi princìpi.

Why, despite the blinding brightness, did everything look gray? It was as if the painfully sharp lights were helpless to dispel all the darkness the people had brought in from the night outside.

Ce n’est pas possible d’éplucher des pommes de terre et de gratter des carottes en combinaison.

The inspector knew the mentality of malefactors, criminals and crooks. He knew that you always find some kind of passion at the root of it.

He distrusted ideas, as they were always too rigid to reflect reality, which, as he knew from experience, was very fluid.

She came forward, the outlines of her figure blurred in the half-light. She came forward like a film star, or rather like the ideal woman in an adolescent's dream.

He was a big, bony man. Iron muscles shaped his jacket sleeves and quickly wore through new trousers. He had a way of imposing himself just by standing there.

C'era un'atmosfera da domenica sera, quando ci si sente fiacchi senza aver fatto nulla, invasi da un molle torpore, e i minuti scorrono più lenti che gli altri giorni.

We’re a bit like criminal lawyers. We’re the public face of things, but it’s the civil lawyers who do the serious work, in the shadows.

If I try to define my state as accurately as possible, I'd say that I possessed a warped lucidity. Reality existed around me, and I was in contact with it. I was aware of my actions.

It was the serene cheerfulness of a man who has no nightmares, who feels at peace with himself and everyone else. They [Americans] were almost all of them like that. And it definitely got Maigret’s back up. It made him think of clothing that was too neat, too clean, too well-pressed.

The change in the girl's face was more subtle, almost invisible; it was not joy, there was no sparkle, but something like a serene contentment. It was as though she had ripened, as though there were a growing plenitude in her, never there before.

Ayon kay Georges Simenon, ang dahilan daw ng pagsusulat n'ya ay "to exorcise the demon in me." Totoo yon para sa karamihan ng mga manunulat. Ang pagpuksa sa mga personal na demonyo ang nagsilbing makina sa likod ng mga di na mabilang na sanaysay, kwento, at tula. Ang manunulat ay biktima ng isang sumpa na para sa karaniwang tao ay ligo lang ang katapat.

Questa volta lui fu incapace di girare la testa dall'altra parte, tanto il suo volto lo affascinava. Mai neppure nei momenti in cui i loro corpi erano stati più uniti, l'aveva trovata così bella, così raggiante. Mai aveva visto sulla sua bocca carnosa un sorriso che esprimesse così intensamente il trionfo dell'amore. Mai, con un solo sguardo, si era impossessata di lui in modo così totale. «Lo vedi, Tony,» gli gridò «non ci hanno separati!».

È conoscendo meglio la vittima che in genere si scopre l'assassino.

The weather was so contrary and fierce that the rain wasn't mere rain or the wind freezing wind - this was a conspiracy of the elements.

There’s no skill and no grace to it, but you

El crimen no cuenta… Cuenta lo que ocurre, o ha ocurrido, en la mente de quien lo comete. GEORGES SIMENON

È terribile pensare che siamo tutti uomini, tutti destinati, chi più chi meno, a portare il nostro fardello sotto un cielo sconosciuto, e che non vogliamo fare il minimo sforzo per capirci a vicenda.

Maigret had often tried to get other people, including men of experience, to admit that those who fall, especially those who have a morbid determination to descend ever lower, are almost always idealists.

So, I am not mad, nor am I a sex maniac. Simply, at the age of forty, I have decided to live as I please, not worrying about conventions, or laws, because I have found out, rather late in the day, that nobody observes them and that, until now, I have been duped.

He had read endless books, he had digested them, pondered over them. Day by day, year after year, he had turned over all the problems of human beings. Yet there were all sorts of simple things he didn't know how to do: he couldn't even walk into an inn and sit down at a table.

The fine and varied literature that I read was almost all in translation: from classic works by Jack London, Victor Hugo and Charles Dickens, to detective stories by Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie and Georges Simenon, not to mention fascinating pornographic books. I also appreciated the biblical stories that contained all three genres.

You came to France to find out about our methods, and you will have observed that we don't have any.

Aveva comunque il fascino di certi tisici: lineamenti delicati, pelle trasparente, labbra sensuali e insieme beffarde.

You expect all kinds of things, but what real life throws up is always more bizarre.

«Novità, signor Féron?». «I tedeschi hanno invaso l'Olanda». «La notizia è ufficiale? ». «Viene dal Belgio». «E Parigi?» «Parigi trasmette musica».

Civilised men fear wild creatures, especially wild creatures of their own kind who remind them of life in the primeval forests of past ages.

Some crime or offence is committed. The match starts on the basis of more or less objective facts. It’s a problem with one or more unknowns that a rational mind tries to solve.

When he went out it was freezing, and a pale winter sun was rising over Paris. No thought of escape had as yet crossed Monsieur Monde's mind. 'Morning, Joseph.' 'Morning, monsieur.' As a matter of fact, it started like an attack of flu. In the car he felt a shiver. He was very susceptible to head colds. Some winters they would hang on for weeks, and his pockets would be stuffed with wet handkerchiefs, which mortified him. Moreover, that morning he ached all over, perhaps from having slept in an awkward position, or was it a touch of indigestion due to last night's supper? 'I'm getting flu,' he thought. Then, just as they were crossing the Grands Boulevards, instead of automatically checking the time on the electric clock as he usually did, he raised his eyes and noticed the pink chimney pots outlined against a pale blue sky where a tiny white cloud was floating. It reminded him of the sea. The harmony of blue and pink suddenly brought a breath of Mediterranean air to his mind, and he envied people who, at that time of year, lived in the South and wore white flannels.

Era vero. In quel momento tutto era vero, perché viveva ogni cosa cosi come veniva, senza chiedersi niente, senza cercare di capire, senza neppure sospettare che un giorno ci sarebbe stato qualcosa da capire.

I’m at sea, lieutenant … We probably both are. Except that you, you fight the waves, you mean to go in a definite direction, whereas I let myself drift with the current, clutching here and there on a passing branch.

Take trains, for instance. He was no longer a child, and it wasn’t anything mechanical about them that attracted him. If he had a preference for night trains, it was because he sensed in them something strange, almost wicked

Sapeva solo che quella passeggiata sotto il sole, accompagnata dalla vocetta di sua figlia, era dolce e malinconica al tempo stesso. Si sentiva felice e triste. Ma non a causa di Andrêe né di Nicolas. Non ricordava di averci pensato. Felice e triste come la vita, così avrebbe voluto dire.

I felt for too long anyway that there was something creaky about this story. You needn’t try to understand, but when all the material clues manage to confuse matters rather than clarify them, it means they’ve been faked … and everything, without exception, is fake in this case. It all creaked.

INTERVIEWER What do you mean by “too literary”? What do you cut out, certain kinds of words? SIMENON Adjectives, adverbs, and every word which is there just to make an effect. Every sentence which is there just for the sentence. You know, you have a beautiful sentence—cut it. Every time I find such a thing in one of my novels it is to be cut.

At five-thirty the rain began to fall in great, heavy drops which bounced off the pavement before they spread out into black spots. At the same time thunder rumbled from the direction of Charenton and an eddy of wind lifted the dust, carried away the hats of passers-by who took to their heels and who, after a few confused moments, were all in the shelter of doorways or under the awnings of cafe terraces. Street pedlars of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine scurried about with an apron or a sack over their heads, pushing their carts as they tried to run. Rivulets already began to flow along the two sides of the street, the gutters sang, and on every floor you could see people hurriedly closing their windows.

The sun finally died in beauty, flinging out its crimson flames, which cast their reflection on the faces of passers-by, giving them a strangely feverish look. The darkness of the trees became deeper. You could hear the Seine flowing. Sounds carried farther, and people in their beds could feel, as they did every night, the vibration of the ground as buses rolled past.

She must have been pretty once. At least, like everyone, she had been young. Now her eyes, her mouth, her whole body exuded weakness. Could it be that she was ill and waiting for her next attack? Some people who know that at a particular hour they are going to start suffering again have that expression, subdued and yet tense, like drug addicts waiting for the hour of their dose.

What Zograffi would have to realize was that Elie had come to the end, and there was no farther-on for him. Nothing. Emptiness. They could do anything to him they liked. They could prescribe any punishment. But they mustn't force him to leave. That was beyond him. he would rather sit down on the curbstone and let himself die there in the sun. He was tired. For the others, for a man like Zograffi, did that word have the terrible significance it had for him?

That feeling about trains, for instance. Of course he had long outgrown the boyish glamour of the steam-engine. Yet there was something that had an appeal for him in trains, especially in night-trains, which always put queer, vaguely improper notions in his head - though he would have been hard put to it to define them. Also he had an impression that those who leave by night-trains leave forever - an impression heightened the previous night by his glimpse of those Italians piled into their carriage like emigrants

The street sprinkler went past and, as its rasping rotary broom spread water over the tarmac, half the pavement looked as if it had been painted with a dark stain. A big yellow dog had mounted a tiny white bitch who stood quite still. In the fashion of colonials the old gentleman wore a light jacket, almost white, and a straw hat. Everything held its position in space as if prepared for an apotheosis. In the sky the towers of Notre-Dame gathered about themselves a nimbus of heat, and the sparrows – minor actors almost invisible from the street – made themselves at home high up among the gargoyles. A string of barges drawn by a tug with a white and red pennant had crossed the breadth of Paris and the tug lowered its funnel, either in salute or to pass under the Pont Saint-Louis. Sunlight poured down rich and luxuriant, fluid and gilded as oil, picking out highlights on the Seine, on the pavement dampened by the sprinkler, on a dormer window, and on a tile roof on the Île Saint-Louis. A mute, overbrimming life flowed from each inanimate thing, shadows were violet as in impressionist canvases, taxis redder on the white bridge, buses greener. A faint breeze set the leaves of a chestnut tree trembling, and all down the length of the quai there rose a palpitation which drew voluptuously nearer and nearer to become a refreshing breath fluttering the engravings pinned to the booksellers’ stalls. People had come from far away, from the four corners of the earth, to live that one moment. Sightseeing cars were lined up on the parvis of Notre-Dame, and an agitated little man was talking through a megaphone. Nearer to the old gentleman, to the bookseller dressed in black, an American student contemplated the universe through the view-finder of his Leica. Paris was immense and calm, almost silent, with her sheaves of light, her expanses of shadow in just the right places, her sounds which penetrated the silence at just the right moment. The old gentleman with the light-coloured jacket had opened a portfolio filled with coloured prints and, the better to look at them, propped up the portfolio on the stone parapet. The American student wore a red checked shirt and was coatless. The bookseller on her folding chair moved her lips without looking at her customer, to whom she was speaking in a tireless stream. That was all doubtless part of the symphony. She was knitting. Red wool slipped through her fingers. The white bitch’s spine sagged beneath the weight of the big male, whose tongue was hanging out. And then when everything was in its place, when the perfection of that particular morning reached an almost frightening point, the old gentleman died without saying a word, without a cry, without a contortion while he was looking at his coloured prints, listening to the voice of the bookseller as it ran on and on, to the cheeping of the sparrows, the occasional horns of taxis. He must have died standing up, one elbow on the stone ledge, a total lack of astonishment in his blue eyes. He swayed and fell to the pavement, dragging along with him the portfolio with all its prints scattered about him. The male dog wasn’t at all frightened, never stopped. The woman let her ball of wool fall from her lap and stood up suddenly, crying out: ‘Monsieur Bouvet!

The committed man, whatever he is, makes me afraid, makes me bristle. I wonder if he is sincere. And, if he appears to me to be so, I wonder if he is intelligent.

Maigret never took notes. If he had a propelling pencil in his hand and a paper in front of him, it was only to make doodles that had no connection with the case.

Perhaps, when it came down to it, that gaze attracted her? Wasn’t this big, placid man, smoking his pipe and staring into space, more of a friend than an enemy?

Everyone was watching Maigret. Children followed him, one of them imitating his heavy gait.

Could you tell me, Maigret, why plainclothes policemen always go around in twos, just like plumbers?

But what he sought, what he waited and watched out for, was the crack in the wall. In other words, the instant when the human being comes out from behind the opponent.

Perhaps it wasn't she that I loved, but life?

It’s just that life, with its betrayals, compromises and its overriding demands, is stronger.