Autoportrait Quotes

“I want this epitaph engraved on my tombstone: “See you soon”
― Édouard Levé, Autoportrait

“I am slow to notice when someone mistreats me, it’s always so surprising: evil is somehow unreal.”
― Édouard Levé, Autoportrait

“At the beach girls arouse me less than in the library.”
― Édouard Levé, Autoportrait

“To describe my life precisely would take longer than to live it.”
― Édouard Levé, Autoportrait

“I have no desire to change things because I am the youngest in my family. I like meeting new people when I travel: these brief and inconsequential encounters have the thrill of beginnings and the sadness of separations.”
― Édouard Levé, Autoportrait

“I wonder where the dreams go that I don't remember. I do not know what to do with my hands when they have nothing to do. Even though it's not for me, I turn around when someone whistles in the street. Dangerous animals do not scare me. I have seen lightening. I wish they had slides for grown-ups. I have read more volumes one than volumes two. The date on my birth certificate is wrong. I am not sure I have any influence. I talk to my things when they're sad. I don't know why I write. I prefer a ruin to a monument. I am calm during reunions. I have nothing against New Year's Eve. Fifteen years old is the middle of my life, regardless of when I die. I believe there is an afterlife, but not an afterdeath. I do not ask "do you love me". Only once can I say "I'm dying" without telling a lie. The best day of my life may already be behind me.”
― Édouard Levé, Autoportrait

“I don’t write in the morning, my brain isn’t up to it yet, I don’t write in the afternoon, I’m too sad, I write from five o’clock on, I need to have been awake a long time, my body relaxed from a day’s fatigue.”
― Édouard Levé, Autoportrait

“Everything I Write is True, But So What?”
― Édouard Levé, Autoportrait

“The eve of a long trip is filled with both exaltation and anxiety, but the day itself is a pure euphoria of action, and anxiety returns in the middle of the trip, at an empty moment, when the exoticism of the setting out has not yet given way to that of going home.”
― Édouard Levé, Autoportrait

“I accumulate beginnings.”
― Édouard Levé, Autoportrait

“I am not an expert in anything.”
― Édouard Levé, Autoportrait

“I am attracted to women who are generous with their time, their smiles, their conversation, their affection, and their physical desire.”
― Édouard Levé, Autoportrait

“Driving once I thought I saw a road sign that said “Cheese Clinic,” I wondered whether they took care of cheese there or of people, using cheese.”
― Édouard Levé, Autoportrait

“My voice carries less in the snow.”
― Édouard Levé, Autoportrait

“If I travel with someone, I see half as much of the country as if I traveled by myself.”
― Édouard Levé, Autoportrait

“I am more attentive to the script of a play when I read it than when I see it performed.”
― Édouard Levé, Autoportrait

“I am not sure I love New York.”
― Édouard Levé, Autoportrait

“I have less desire to change things than to change my perception of them.”
― Édouard Levé, Autoportrait

“I would rather be bored alone than with someone else. I'm drawn to strange people. At a museum I look at people with the eyes of an artist, in the streets with my own. I can't remember the name of a person I have just met. In India, I travelled in a train compartment with a Swiss man I didn't know, we were crossing the plains of Kerala, I told him more about myself in several hours than I had told my best friends in several years, I knew I would never see him again, he was an ear without repercussions. Maybe I'm writing this book so I won't have to talk to anymore.”
― Édouard Levé, Autoportrait

“When I was a child, I looked at rugs the same way, as a grown-up, I look at an abstract painting.”
― Édouard Levé, Autoportrait

“It was very hard for me to tell my mother that I loved her, it took me until I was thirty-five. I told my father that I loved him when I was depressed, at thirty-five, I was thinking of killing myself, I thought it would be a shame to die without telling him. I haven't told my brother that I loved him. I did not tell my grandmother that I loved her. I have told five women I loved them, which in four cases was true.”
― Édouard Levé, Autoportrait

“When I expect to achieve nothing, ideas come. Putting two things together that are unrelated gives me an idea. I make lots of little works instead of undertaking a big one. I will never be done with literature.”
― Édouard Levé, Autoportrait

“Competition does not drive me. I do things better for pleasure and without trying. I mistakenly studied difficult subjects that were no use to me when I might have studied the arts for pleasure, which would have smoothed my path. I wasted time trying to be good at math. I taught myself the things that mattered to me most: to write and to take pictures.”
― Édouard Levé, Autoportrait

“Purées frustrate me because they have no crunch.”
― Édouard Levé, Autoportrait

“I am not looking to seduce a wearer of Birkenstocks. I do not like the big toe.”
― Édouard Levé, Autoportrait

“I do not foresee making love with an animal.”
― Édouard Levé, Autoportrait

“I wonder whether anyone besides old people like riot police.”
― Édouard Levé, Autoportrait

“I have never considered sleeping with a nun.”
― Édouard Levé, Autoportrait

“Listening to music in the car is a way of passing the time, thus shortening my life.”
― Édouard Levé, Autoportrait

“I have never attended a nudist funeral.”
― Édouard Levé, Autoportrait