Yasmina Khadra Quotes

Life is a train that stops at no stations; you either jump abroad or stand on the platform and watch as it passes.

Celui qui passe à coté de la plus belle histoire de sa vie n'aura que l'âge de ses regrets et tous les soupirs du monde ne sauraient bercer son âme.

Music is the true breath of life. We eat so we won't starve to death. We sing so we can hear ourselves live.

إن من قال لك إن الرجل الذي لايبكي، بجهل ماهي الرجولة، فلاتخجل من البكاء يابني، لأن الدموع أرقى ماتملك

For a man to think he can fulfil his destiny without a woman is a misunderstanding, a miscalculation; it is reckless and folly. Certainly a woman is not everthing, but everything depends on her.

We've already been killed, all of us. It happened so long ago, we've forgotten it.

Though there are things beyond our understanding, for the most part we are the architects of our own unhappiness.

Nous, les Arabes, ne sommes pas paresseux. Nous prenons seulement le temps de vivre. Ce qui n'est pas le cas des Occidentaux. Pour eux, le temps, c'est de l'argent. Pour nous, le temps ça n'a pas de prix. Un verre de thé suffit à notre bonheur, alors qu'aucun bonheur ne leur suffit. Toute la différence est là.

We're fine together, just like this: Our silence protects us from ourselves

السرّ الحقيقي لا يتقاسمه المرء مع أحد

Les hommes ont inventé la guerre, la femme a inventé la résistance.

من يحلم كثيراً ينسى أن يعيش

La vie est un apprentissage permanent ; plus on croit savoir, moins on sait, tant les choses changent et avec elles les mentalités.

Quand on ne trouve pas la solution à son malheur, on lui cherche un coupable.

On peut tout te prendre; tes biens, tes plus belles années, l'ensemble de tes joies, et l'ensemble de tes mérites, jusqu'à ta dernière chemise. Il te restera toujours tes rêves pour réinventer le monde que l'on t'a confisqué...

If you want your life to be a small part of eternity, to be lucid even in the heart of madness, love... Love with all your strength, love as though it is all you know how to do, love enough to make the gods themselves jealous... for it is in love that all ugliness reveals its beauty.

Si tu veux pleurer, pleure; si tu veux espérer, prie, mais, de grâce, ne cherche pas de coupable là où tu ne trouves pas de sens à ta douleur.

You're all the world to me. Whenever i can't see you... I die a little.

If you haven’t lost your mind yet, that’s because you haven’t seen very much.

الذين شاؤوا الحرب كانوا أول الهاربين، أنا لم أشأ الحرب لهذا خضتها بلا خداع

...tout compte fait, je crois que mon tort était de ne pas avoir eu le courage de mes convictions. Je pouvais me trouver toutes les excuses du monde, aucune d'elles ne me donnerait raison. En réalité maintenant que j'avais perdu la face , je me cherchais un masque. Pareil à un défiguré, je me cachais derrière mes pansements qui me servaient aussi de moucharabiehs. Je regardais en cachette la vérité des autres, en abusais pour distancer la mienne

There's nothing, absolutely nothing, more important than your life. And your life isn't more important than other people's lives.

You're living through the only moments that make life worthwhile... In love, even beasts become divine.

When you can't find a remedy for your pain, you look for someone to blame.

Si la rose savait que sa grâce et sa beauté la conduisent droit dans un vase, elle serait la première à trancher la gorge avec sa propre épine.

Anyone who tells you that a greater symphony exists than the breath in your body is lying.

Omul care lasă să-i scape dragostea vieții sale va ajunge singur cu regretele sale și toate suspinele lumii nu-i pot aduce alinare sufletului.

Get a grip on yourself. there's only one god here on earth, and that's you. If you don't like the world, make one you like better.

...we are the whole life that we have lived, its highs and lows, its fortunes and its hardships; we are the sum of the ghosts that haunt us...

Il te restera toujours tes rèves pour réinventer le monde que l'on t'a confisqué.

علمني الأدب أن الحقيقة لا يفاوض عليها، و إن كنت امتنعت دوما عن الأكل عندما يعضني الجوع فلأنني لا آكل من أي معلف

Ce n'était pas une vie; on existait, et c'est tout.

And yet we were very much alike; we’d lost our souls, and we were ready to destroy others.

Je me demande encore si, tout compte fait, le monde n'étaient qu’apparences.

- Vivre, c'est courir des risques tous les jours, Kurt. - Ça dépend dans quel sens on court. (p.47)

Basically, being alive means keeping yourself ready for the sky to fall in on you at any time. If you start from the assumption that existence is only an ordeal, a test we have to pass, then you’re equipped to deal with its sorrows and its surprises. If you persist in expecting it to give you something it can’t give, that just proves that you haven’t understood anything. Take things as they come; don’t turn them into a drama. You’re not piloting the ship, you’re following the course of your destiny.

There’s no more painful love than the love you feel when you’re in a railroad station and you exchange glances with someone whose train is headed in the other direction.

Sunset, springtime, the blue of the sea, the stars in the sky, all the things that entrance us exert their magic only in the orbit if woman.

The man who let the love of his life pass him by will end up alone with his regrets and all the sighs in the world won't soothe his soul.

Si la ville était une illusion, la campagne serait une émotion sans cesse grandissante ; chaque jour qui s'y lève rappelle l'aube de l'humanité, chaque soir s'y amène comme une paix définitive.

As long as the world's been the world, there's been those who live with it and those who refuse to accept it.

مانفع السعادة إذا لم يتقاسمها المرء ياحبيبي أمين؟ كانت أفراحي تخمد كلما كانت أفراحك لا تجاريها. كنت تريد أطفالا. كنت أريد أن استحقهم. ما من طفل بمأمن تماما بدون وطن.. لا تنقم عليّ

Le coucher de soleil, le printemps, le bleu de la mer, les étoiles de la nuit, toutes ces choses que nous disons captivantes n’ont de magie que lorsqu’elles gravitent autour d’une femme, mon garçon… Car la Beauté, la vraie, l’ unique, la beauté phare, la beauté absolue, c ’est la femme. Le reste, tout le reste n ’est qu ’accessoires de charme.

La fortune, comme l,infortune, est une épreuve, et notre vocation est de la surmonter. (p.315)

Quand la femme n’est pas l’ambition suprême de l’homme, quand elle n’est pas la fin de toute initiative en ce monde, la vie ne mériterait ni ses joies ni ses peines

Et puis, c'est la vie; elle ne nous prend que ce qu'elle nous a donné. Ni plus ni moins. (p.190)

Le regret est un état d'âme. Le remords est un cas de conscience. Et je n'ai ni l'un ni l'autre. (p.57)

An isolated person is doomed beyond remedy." Yasmina Khadra, Swallows of Kabul

This land does not belong to you. It belongs to that ancient shepherd whose ghost is standing next to you, though you refuse to see it. Since you do not know how to share, take your vineyards and your bridges, your paved roads and your railway tracks, your cities and your gardens and give back what remains to its rightful owners".

On ne retombe pas en enfance, on n'en sort jamais. Vieux, moi? Qu'est-ce qu'un vieillard sinon un enfant qui a pris de l'âge ou du vendre ?...

...the one, true unique beauty is woman. The rest, all the rest, exists simply to adorn her.

In the eyes of Popes and Imams we are Us and Them, but in the eyes of the Lord we are one.

Chaque homme est son propre dieu. C'est en choisissant un autre qu'il se renie et devient aveugle et injuste.

I had a little light. I blew on it, trying to turn it into a torch, but I blew a bit too hard and put it out.

Somewhere it is written that I was born to leave my home, to constantly leave, each time leaving a part of me behind.

What to keep of all these reels of film, what to throw away? If we could only take 1 memory on our journey, what would we choose? At the expense of what or whom? And most importantly, how to choose among all these shadows, all these spectres, all these titans? Who are we, when all is said and done? Are we the people we once were or the people we wish we had been? Are we the pain we caused others or the pain we suffered at the hands of others? The encounters we missed or those fortuitous meetings that changed the course of our destiny? Our time behind the scenes that saved us form our vanity or the moment in the limelight that warmed us? We are all of these things, we are the whole life that we have lived, its highs and lows, its fortunes and its hardships, we are the sum of the ghosts that haunt us... we are a host of characters in one, so convincing in every role we played that it is impossible for us to tell who we really were, who we have become, who we will be.

Quando um mosquito se deixa apanhar numa teia, não pode querer mal à aranha.

Even though I was growing up in a land that had been tormented since the dawn of time, I refused to consider the world as a battlefield.

Quelle que soit l'ampleur des dégâts, aucun cataclysme n'empêchera la Terre de tourner.

Quant à ce que nous appelons fatalité, ce n'est que notre entêtement à ne pas assumer les conséquences de nos petites et grandes faiblesses.

What's a house when you've lost a country?' she says with a sigh.

Ce que Dieu te prête, tu dois savoir le rendre. Aucune chose, sur terre, ne t'appartient vraiment.

Run after her… One day, man will surely be able to catch a comet, but all the glories of this world will not console the man who allows the real opportunity in his life to slip away.

Oui, tout à fait Notre pays est un État de droit. C’est indéniable. Encore faut-il préciser de quel droit il s’agit… Il n’y en a qu’un seul, unique et indivisible : le droit de garder le silence.

...if he lost his way in a moment of collective hysteria, that's because the horrors of everyday life are sufficiently powerful to overwhelm all defenses, and human degeneracy is deeper than any abyss.

It seems that the whole world is beginning to decay, and that its putrefaction has chosen to spread outward from here, from the land of the Pashtuns, where desertification proceeds at a steady, implacable crawl even in the consciences and intellects of men.

... Je n'en pouvais plus de me languir d'elle, je n'en pouvais plus de tendre la main vers elle et de ne rencontrer que son absence au bout de mes doigts. Je me disais: Elle va te repousser, elle va te dire des mots très durs, elle va te faire tomber le ciel sur la tête; cela ne me dissuadait pas. Je ne craignais plus de résilier les serments, de broyer mon âme dans l'étreinte de mon poing; je ne craignais plus d'offenser les dieux, d'incarner l'opprobre jusqu’à la fin des âges.

Posterity has never made the grave's embrace less cruel. It simply assuages our fear of death, because there is no better cure for out inevitable morality then the illusion of a beautiful eternity. But there is one illusion I still hold dear: that is the thought of an enlightened nation. That is the only future I still dream of.

When dreams are turned away, death becomes the ultimate salvation….There are only two extremes in human madness: the instant when you become aware of your own impotence and the instant when you become aware of the vulnerability of others. It’s a question of accepting one’s madness…or suffering it.

A brute is still a brute, even when smiles; the eyes are where the soul declares its true nature.

You can know all there is to know about life and mankind, but what do you really know about yourself?

Le poisson rouge ne peut ramener la complexité des océans à la quiétude de son bocal. (p.185)

I stayed at the port until the dawn broke, leaning over the railing, unable to reconcile myself to the idea that something that had never really begun was truly over.

I looked her up and down. She wouldn’t meet my eyes. I didn’t recognize her anymore. She was nothing like the image of her I had in my head. Her features meant nothing to me; she was someone else.

Il est des choses qui nous dépassent. Les contester ne nous mènerait nulle part. Les traquer nous perdrait à jamais. Il faut mettre une croix sur ce qui est fini si l'on veut se réinventer ailleurs.

Les choses se seraient arrêtées là s'il n'y avait pas eu ce coup de vent. Si on m'avait dit qu'un simple coup de vent pouvait changer le cours d'une vie, j'aurais peut-être pris les devant. Mais à dix-sept ans, on se sent en mesure de retomber sur ses pattes quoi qu'il arrive.

Vivre, c'est d'abord se tenir prêt à recevoir le ciel sur la tête. Si tu pars du principe que l'existence n'est qu'une épreuve, tu es équipé pour gérer ses peines et ses surprises. Si tu persistes à attendre d'elle ce qu'elle ne peut te donner, c'est la preuve que tu n'as rien compris. Prends les choses comme elles viennent, n'en fais pas un drame ni un plat ; ce n'est pas toi qui mènes ta barque, mais le cours de ton destin.

Ressaisis-toi, bonhomme. Il n'y a q'un seul dieu sur terre, et c'est toi. Si le monde ne te convient pas, réinventes-en un autre, et ne laisse aucun chagrin te faire descendre de ton nuage. La vie sourit toujours à celui qui sait lui rendre la monnaie de sa pièce.

Amin, you’re not making sense to me. Things have always been this way, since the beginning of time. Some die so others can be saved. You don’t believe in the salvation of others?

The stations of life are not places to inhabit. Rather, they are moments of opportunity that will not repeat themselves.

Le courage, monsieur Krausmann, le courage tout court, c'est de croire en soi.

Le livre n'est qu'un miroir. Il nous renvoie à ce que nous sommes. C'est pour cela qu'un livre est adoré par certains et vomi par d'autres. Chacun y trouve sa part de sensibilité, sa part d'humanité. Le livre fait partie du rêve et le rêve est le père de tous les espoirs.

You cannot change what's written in the stars. Liar! Later, much later, I would come to this realisation: nothing is written. If it were, there would be no need fo trials, morality would be an ageing hag and shame would not blush in the presence of vertue. Though there are things beyond our understaning, for the most part we are the architects of our own unhappiness.

The three of us, each paralyzed in his own silence, contemplate the horizon, which the dawn lights up with a thousand fires; and each of us knows for certain that the rising sun of this day, like all those that have gone before it, will be incapable of bringing sufficient light into the hearts of men.

Was I happy after that? I think so. I experienced moments of pleasure, moments of unforgettable joy; I loved again and dreamed again like a wide-eyed boy. And yet I always felt there was something missing, something that left me somehow crippled, in short that I only every hovered on the fringes of happiness.

La tenancière m'offrit une assiettée d'amandes grillées et me promit sa meilleure fille pour fêter ma majorité. – Sans rancune, petit? – Sans rancune, madame. – Comme c'est touchant... Et puis, arrête de me broder avec tes « madame », ça me constipe.

He took a fine fresh fig from his pocket and washed it meticulously in a glass of water; then he peeled it open before our eyes. Inside, the beautiful fig was crawling with maggots. The imam concluded his lesson by saying, ‘It’s not a question of washing your bodies, but your souls, young men. If you’re rotten inside, neither rivers nor oceans will suffice to make you clean.

Only after something is done do we truly realise it cannot be undone. Never had a night seemed to me so ill-omened; never had a celebration seemed to me so unjust, so cruel. The music drifting on the breeze sounded like an incantation that conjured me like a demon. I felt excluded from the joy of these people as they laughed and danced. I thought about the terrible waste my life had become … How? How could I have come so close to happiness and not had the courage to seize it with both hands? What terrible sin had I committed that I was forced to watch love seep though my fingers like blood from a wound? What is love when all it can do is survey the damage? What are its myths and legends, its victories and its miracles if a lover is not prepared to rise above, to brave the thunderbolt, to renounce eternal happiness for one kiss, one embrace, one moment with his beloved? Regret coursed through my veins like a poisonous sap, swelled my heart with loathsome fury. I hated myself, this useless burden abandoned by the roadside.

An aurora borealis rises over festive orchards; the branches of the trees immediately begin to bud, to blossom, to bend under the weight of their fruit. The child runs through the wild grass, heading for the Wall. It collapses like a big cardboard box, broadening the horizon and exorcising the fields, which extend over the plains as far as the eye can see...Run...And the child runs, laughing all the while, his arms spread out like a bird's wings.

The Afghan sky, under which the most beautiful idylls on earth were woven, grew suddenly dark with armored predators; its azure limpidity was streaked with powder trails, and the terrified swallows dispersed under a barrage of missiles. War had arrived. In fact, it had just found itself a homeland...

L'amour ne s'apprivoise pas, ne s'improvise pas, ne s'impose pas; il se construit à deux. En tout équité. S'il reposait sur l'un, l'autre serait son malheur potentiel. Quand on court après lui, on l'effraie; alors il s'enfuit, et on ne le rattrape jamais. L'amour est fait de hasard et de chance. A une bretelle de la vie, il est là, offrande sur le chemin. S'il est sincère, il se bonifie avec le temps. Et s'il ne dure pas, c'est que l'on s'est trompé de mode d'emploi.

Personne ne croit au miracle des pluies, aux féeries du printemps, encore moins aux aurores d'un lendemain clément. Les hommes sont devenus fous ; ils ont tourné le dos au jour pour faire face à la nuit. Les saints patrons ont été destitués. Les prophètes sont morts et leurs fantômes crucifiés sur le front des enfants...

But she was so happy in her gilded cage, wasn’t she? She ate well, slept well, enjoyed herself She lacked nothing. And then, look, a bunch of mental cases turn her away from her happiness and send her to -- how did you put it? -- to ‘blow herself away’?. The good doctor lives next door to a war but he doesn’t want to hear a word about it. And he thinks his wife shouldn’t worry about it, either. … We’re at war. Some people take up arms; others twiddle their thumbs. And still others make a killing in the name of the Cause. That’s life. … Your wife chose her side. The happiness you offered her smelled of decay. It repulsed her, you get it? She didn’t want your happiness. She couldn’t work on her suntan while her people were bent under the Zionist yoke. Do I have to draw you a picture to make you understand, or do you refuse to look reality in the face?

Le rêve est le tuteur du pauvre, et son pourfendeur. Il nous tient par la main, puis il nous tient dans la sienne pour nous larguer quand il veut après nous avoir baladés à sa guise à travers mille promesses. C’est un gros malin, le rêve, un fin psychologue : il sait nous prendre à nos propres sentiments comme on prend au mot un fieffé menteur ; lorsque nous lui confions notre cœur et notre esprit, il nous fausse compagnie au beau milieu d’une déroute, et nous nous retrouvons avec du vent dans la tête et un trou dans la poitrine – il ne nous reste plus que les yeux pour pleurer.

You`re happy, but you don`t know it. You`re even overflowing with happiness, and you don`t know how to rejoice in it. All your life, you`ve only listened to other people-your teachers and your holy men, your leaders and your demons-and they`ve spoken to you of nothing but wrongs and bitterness and war. That`s what your ears are filled with; that`s why your hands shake. And that`s why you`re afraid to listen to your heart right now and seize the opportunity that`s come to you at last. Listen to your heart. It`s the only voice that`s talking to you about yourself, the only counselor that knows the real truth. Its reasons are stronger than all the reasons in the world. Trust your heart and let it guide your steps. And above all, don`t be afraid.

You think you know. Then you lower your guard and act as though everything's just great. With the passage of time, you stop paying as much attention to things as you should. You're confident. What more can you do? Life is smiling on you. So is luck. You can afford your dreams. Everything's fine, everything blesses you...and then, without warning, the sky falls in on your head. And once you're flat on your back, you realize that your life, your whole life - with its ups and downs, its pains and pleasures, its promises and failures, hangs and has always hung by a thread as flimsy and imperceptible as the threads in a spider's web. Suddenly, the slightest sound terrifies you, and no longer feel like believing in anything whatsoever. All you want to do is close your eyes and think no more

Why sacrifice some for the benefit of others? It’s generally the best and the bravest who choose to lay down their lives for the sake of those who hide in their holes. So why favor the sacrifice of the righteous in order to permit the less righteous to survive them? Don’t you think that’s a way of weakening the human species? What’s going to be left of it in a few generations if it’s always the best who are called upon to exit the scene so that the cowards, the counterfeits, the charlatans, and the pricks can continue to proliferate like rats?

Μονάχα η βλακεία δεν τα φτύνει ποτέ, Τζούνιορ. Το καταλαβαίνεις; Αν δίναμε από μια δεκάρα σε κάθε βλάκα πάνω στη γη, θα καταστρέφαμε όλες τις αυτοκρατορίες του κόσμου. Από τις καταβολές του χρόνου, οι άνθρωποι τρώνε ο ένας τις σάρκες του άλλου με μανία. Δεν ξέρουν να κάνουν τίποτε άλλο. Η ειρήνη δεν είναι παρά μια ανακωχή γι' αυτούς, μια ευκαιρία για να τελειοποιήσουν τα σχέδιά τους για αντίποινα, τα ύπουλα χτυπήματα, τους πολέμους και τις συμφορές. Και ο Θεός νιώθει ένοχος με όλο αυτόν το βούρκο που μονάχα εμείς είμαστε σε θέση να δημιουργήσουμε.

Furthermore, I refuse to wear a burqa. Of all the burdens they've put on us, that's the most degrading. The Shirt of Nessus woudn't do as much damage to my dignity as that wretched getup. It cancels my face and takes away my identity and turns me into an object. Here, at least, I'm me Zunaira, Mohsen Ramat's wife, age thirty-two, former magistrate, dismissed by obscurantists without a hearing and without compensation, but with enough self-respect left to brush my hair every day and pay attention to my clothes. If I put that damned veil on, I'm neither a human being nor an animal, I'm just an affront, a disgrace, a blemish that has to be hidden. That's too hard to deal with. Especially for someone who was a lawyer, who worked for women's rights. Please, I don't want you to think for a minute that I'm putting on some sort of act. I'd like to, you know, but unfortunately my heart's not in it anymore. Don't ask me to give up my name, my features, the color of my eyes, and the shape of my lips so I can take a walk through squalor and desolation. Don't ask me to become something less than a shadow, an anonymus thing rustling around in a hostile place.

And ever since then, even though I was growing up in a land that had been tormented since the dawn of time, I refused to consider the world as a battlefield. I could see that wars beget wars, that reprisals follow reprisals, but I forbade myself to give them any support of any kind. I didn’t believe in prophesies of discord, and I couldn’t bring myself to accept the notion that God could incite his subjects to take up arms against one another and reduce the exercise of faith to an absurd and frightening question of power relationships. And ever since then, I’ve trusted anyone who required a little of my blood to purify my soul about as much as I would trust a scorpion. I have no desire to believe in valves of tears or valleys of shadows- there are other more charming and less irrational features of the landscape all around me. My father said, “Anyone who tells you that a greater symphony exists than the breath in your body is lying. He wants to undermine your most beautiful possession: the chance to profit from every moment of your life. If you start from the principle that your worst enemy is the very person who tries to sow hatred in your heart, your halfway to happiness. All you have to do is reach out your hand and take the rest. And remember this: there is nothing, absolutely nothing, more important than your life. And your life isn’t more important than other people’s lives