Romain Gary Quotes

• With maternal love, life makes a promise at dawn that it can never hold. You are forced to eat cold food until your days end. After that, each time a woman holds you in her arms and against her chest, these are merely condolences. You always come back to yell at your mother's grave like an abandoned dog. Never again, never again, never again.

  Romain Gary

  Mother, Dog, Condolences

  86 Copy quote

• Humor is an affirmation of dignity, a declaration of man's superiority to all that befalls him.

  Romain Gary

  Positive, Laughter, Work

  Romain Gary (1987). “Promise at Dawn”, p.130, New Directions Publishing

  51 Copy quote

• They thought I suffered from lack of exterior, when I suffered from excess of interior

  Romain Gary

  Excess, Interiors, Exterior

  43 Copy quote

• The avantgarde are people who don't exactly know where they want to go, but are the first to get there.

  Romain Gary

  People, Want, Firsts

  44 Copy quote

• Disease-carrying thoughts swarm and multiply in the dark and twisted labyrinths of our minds, and all that is needed is a mob and a good political slogan for the epidemic to be spread once again, with a burst of automatic weapons or a mushroom cloud.

  Romain Gary

  Dark, Clouds, Epidemics

  Introduction to "The Plague" by Albert Camus, 1962 edition,

  65 Copy quote

• When a war is won, it's the losers, not the winners, who are liberated.

  Romain Gary

  War, Loser, Winner

  "Tulipe". Book by Romain Gary, 1946.

  45 Copy quote

• If there is something that opens horizons, it is precisely ignorance.

  Romain Gary

  Ignorance, Horizon, Ifs

  26 Copy quote

• As long as you live, you hope. You think that everything will just...get better.

  Romain Gary

  Thinking, Long, Get Better

  32 Copy quote

• Sometimes I have the feeling that we live in a dubbed movie and everybody moves their lips but the voices don't correspond. We are all post-synchronized and sometimes is very accomplished and looks natural.

  Romain Gary

  Moving, Voice, Feelings

  33 Copy quote

• Men sometimes die much earlier than they are burried.

  Romain Gary

  Men, Sometimes, Dies

  34 Copy quote

• Reality is not an inspiration for literature. At its best, literature is an inspiration for reality.

  Romain Gary

  Inspirational, Reality, Literature

  28 Copy quote

• I've had a lot of fun. Good-bye, and thank you.

  Romain Gary

  Fun, Bye, Good Bye

  Romain Gary (1983). “King Solomon”, Harvill Press

  34 Copy quote

• ...the only way to prove you are normal is to smash someone's face in

  Romain Gary

  Way, Faces, Normal

  43 Copy quote

• A writer's subconscious is one of the filthiest places there are: as a matter of fact, you can find the whole world there.

  Romain Gary

  World, Matter, Facts

  Romain Gary (1968). “The Dance of Genghis Cohn”, New American Library of Canada

  32 Copy quote

• I sat day after day in my little room, waiting for inspiration to visit me, trying to invent a pseudonym that would express, in a combination of noble and striking sounds, our dream of artistic achievement, a pen name grand enough to compensate for my own feeling of insecurity and helplessness at the idea of everything my mother expected from me.

  Romain Gary

  Mother, Dream, Inspiration

  Romain Gary (1987). “Promise at Dawn”, p.19, New Directions Publishing

  29 Copy quote

• Literature is greater than any of us, dammit.

  Romain Gary

  Literature, Greater

  19 Copy quote

• I am weak, I say with no presumptions. I have no merit, I note it, that is all. There are times that I feel so weak there most be a mistake, and as I don't know what I mean with this, I am not going to say anything else

  Romain Gary

  Mistake, Mean, Say Anything

  22 Copy quote

• 'Gari' in Russian means "burn!"... I want to test myself, a trial by fire, so that my 'I' is burned off.

  Romain Gary

  Mean, Fire, Trials

  "'La Nuit Sera Calme' ('The Night Will Be Calm')". Book by Romain Gary, 1974.

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• I see History as a relay race in which one of us, before dropping in his tracks, must carry one stage further the challenge of being a man.

  Romain Gary

  Men, Race, Track

  Romain Gary (1961). “PROMISE AT DAWN”

  24 Copy quote

• There is more to Jewish history than Auschwitz.

  Romain Gary

  Jewish History, Auschwitz

  "A Chameleon on Show" by Benjamin Ivry, forward.com. January 12, 2011.

  14 Copy quote

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