Pascal Mercier Quotes

Quotes about:

• 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.

  Pascal Mercier

  Moving On, Travel, Home

  Pascal Mercier (2009). “Night Train To Lisbon”, p.119, Atlantic Books Ltd

  53 Copy quote

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

  Pascal Mercier

  Life, Philosophy, Given

  Pascal Mercier (2009). “Night Train To Lisbon”, p.28, Atlantic Books Ltd

  58 Copy quote

• 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 we can find again only by going back there. We travel to ourselves when we go to a place. We have covered a stretch of our life no matter how brief it may have been but by traveling to ourselves we must confront our own loneliness. And isn’t it so that everything we do is done out of fear of our loneliness? Isn’t that why we renounce all the things we will regret at the end of our life?

  Pascal Mercier

  Regret, Loneliness, Going Away

  33 Copy quote

• We live here and now. Everything before and in other places is past. Mostly forgotten. What could, what should be done with all the time that lies ahead of us, open and unshaped, feather-light in its freedom and lead-heavy in its uncertainty? Is it a wish? Dream-like and nostalgic, to stand once again at that point in life and be able to take a completely different direction than the one that has made us who we are?

  Pascal Mercier

  Dream, Lying, Past

  19 Copy quote

• Don't waste your time, do something worthwhile with it." But what can that mean: worthwhile? Finally to start realizing long-cherished wishes. To attack the error that there will always be time for it later....Take the long-dreamed-of trip, learn this language, read those books, buy yourself this jewelry, spend a night in that famous hotel. Don't miss out on yourself. Bigger things are also part of that: to give up the loathed profession, break out of a hated milieu. Do what contributes to making you more genuine, moves you closer to yourself.

  Pascal Mercier

  Giving Up, Book, Moving

  31 Copy quote

• There were people who read and there were the others. Whether you were the a reader or a non-reader was soon apparent. There was no greater distinction between people.

  Pascal Mercier

  People, Distinction, Reader

  17 Copy quote

• When dictatorship is a fact, revolution is a duty!

  Pascal Mercier

  Revolution, Facts, Duty

  Pascal Mercier (2009). “Night Train To Lisbon”, p.47, Atlantic Books Ltd

  21 Copy quote

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

  Pascal Mercier

  Life Is, Imagine

  Pascal Mercier (2009). “Night Train To Lisbon”, p.105, Atlantic Books Ltd

  20 Copy quote

• So, the fear of death might be described as the fear of not being able to become whom one had planned to be.

  Pascal Mercier

  Might, Able, Fear Of Death

  Pascal Mercier (2009). “Night Train To Lisbon”, p.102, Atlantic Books Ltd

  12 Copy quote

• It wasn't only that you didn't see him anymore, meet him anymore. You saw his absence and encountered it as something tangible. His not being there was like the sharply outlined emptiness of a photo with a figure cut out precisely with scissors and now the missing figure is more important, more dominant than all others.

  Pascal Mercier

  Cutting, Missing, Important

  Pascal Mercier (2008). “Night Train to Lisbon: A Novel”, p.157, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  24 Copy quote

• AS SOMBRAS DA ALMA. THE SHADOWS OF THE SOUL. The stories others tell about you and the stories you tell about yourself: which come closer to the truth? Is it so clear that they are your own? Is one an authority on oneself? But that isn't the question that concerns me. The real question is: In such stories, is there really a difference between true and false? In stories about the outside, surely. But when we set out to understand someone on the inside? Is that a trip that ever comes to an end? Is the soul a place of facts? Or are the alleged facts only the deceptive shadows of our stories?

  Pascal Mercier

  Real, Differences, Soul

  27 Copy quote

• I would not like to live in a world without cathedrals. I need their beauty and grandeur. I need their imperious silence. I need it against the witless bellowing of the barracks yard and the witty chatter of the yes-men. I want to hear the rustling of the organ, this deluge of ethereal notes. I need it against the shrill farce of marches.

  Pascal Mercier

  Witty, Men, Silence

  Pascal Mercier (2009). “Night Train To Lisbon”, p.85, Atlantic Books Ltd

  18 Copy quote

• 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.

  Pascal Mercier

  Tired, Long, Feelings

  Pascal Mercier (2009). “Night Train To Lisbon”, p.86, Atlantic Books Ltd

  17 Copy quote

• Then there was a silence he had never before experienced: in it, you could hear the years.

  Pascal Mercier

  Years, Silence

  Pascal Mercier (2009). “Night Train To Lisbon”, p.75, Atlantic Books Ltd

  4 Copy quote

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

  Pascal Mercier

  Discovery, Creation

  Pascal Mercier (2009). “Night Train To Lisbon”, p.178, Atlantic Books Ltd

  10 Copy quote

• I love tunnels. They 're the symbol of hope: sometime it will be bright again. If by chance it is not night.

  Pascal Mercier

  Night, Tunnels, Chance

  Pascal Mercier (2009). “Night Train To Lisbon”, p.184, Atlantic Books Ltd

  10 Copy quote

• 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.

  Pascal Mercier

  Life, Years, Safety

  Pascal Mercier (2008). “Night Train to Lisbon: A Novel”, p.424, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  11 Copy quote

• 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?

  Pascal Mercier

  Children, Moving, Laughing

  Pascal Mercier (2009). “Night Train To Lisbon”, p.28, Atlantic Books Ltd

  15 Copy quote

• [Vanity] is an unrecognised form of stupidity, you have to forget the cosmic meaninglessness of all our acts to be able to be vain and that's a glaring form of stupidity.

  Pascal Mercier

  Vanity, Stupidity, Able

  Pascal Mercier (2009). “Night Train To Lisbon”, p.80, Atlantic Books Ltd

  6 Copy quote

• SOLIDAO, LONELINESS. What is it that we call loneliness. It can't simply be the absence of others, you can be alone and not lonely, and you can be among people and yet be lonely. So what is it? ... it isn't only that others are there, that they fill up the space next to us. But even when they celebrate us or give advice in a friendly conversation, clever, sensitive advice: even then we can be lonely. So loneliness is not something simply connected with the presence of others or with what they do. Then what? What on earth?

  Pascal Mercier

  Lonely, Clever, Loneliness

  13 Copy quote

• Isn't it true that it's not people who meet, but rather the shadows cast by their imaginations?

  Pascal Mercier

  People, Imagination, Shadow

  Pascal Mercier (2009). “Night Train To Lisbon”, p.52, Atlantic Books Ltd

  12 Copy quote

• 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.

  Pascal Mercier

  Beautiful, Mean, Live In The Moment

  Pascal Mercier (2009). “Night Train To Lisbon”, p.149, Atlantic Books Ltd

  6 Copy quote

• But when we set out to understand somebody’s inside? Is that a trip that ever ends? Is the soul a place of facts? Or are the alleged facts only the deceptive shadows of our stories?

  Pascal Mercier

  Soul, Shadow, Stories

  Pascal Mercier (2008). “Night Train to Lisbon: A Novel”, p.294, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  14 Copy quote

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

  Pascal Mercier

  Sometimes

  Pascal Mercier (2009). “Night Train To Lisbon”, p.29, Atlantic Books Ltd

  9 Copy quote

• I am still there, at that distant place in time, I never left it, but live expanded in the past, or out of it.

  Pascal Mercier

  Past, Stills, Left

  Pascal Mercier (2009). “Night Train To Lisbon”, p.119, Atlantic Books Ltd

  8 Copy quote

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