• You belong to me and all of Paris belongs to me and I belong to this notebook and this pencil.
• “You should only read what is truly good or what is frankly bad”
• I thought that all generations were lost by something and always had been and always would be and I stopped at the Lilas to keep the statue company and drank a cold beer before going home to the flat over the sawmill.
• “We’ll come home and eat here and we’ll have a lovely meal and drink Beaune from the cooperative you can see right out of the window there with the price of the Beaune on the window. And afterwards we’ll read and then go to bed and make love.” “And we’ll never love anyone else but each other.”
• You expected to be sad in the fall. Part of you died each year when the leaves fell from the trees and their branches were bare against the wind and the cold, wintry light. But you knew there would always be the spring, as you knew the river would flow again after it was frozen. When the cold rains kept on and killed the spring, it was as though a young person had died for no reason.
• The only thing that could spoil a day was people and if you could keep from making engagements, each day had no limits. People were always the limiters of happiness except for the very few that were as good as spring itself.
• It was all part of the fight against poverty that you never win except by not spending.
• We ate well and cheaply and drank well and cheaply and slept well and warm together and loved each other.
• The people that I liked and had not met went to the big cafes because they were lost in them and no one noticed them and they could be alone in them together
• All things truly wicked start from an innocence. So you live day by day and enjoy what you have and do not worry. You lie and hate it and it destroys you and every day is more dangerous, but you live day to day as in a war.
• There is never any ending to Paris and the memory of each person who has lived in it differs rom that of any other. We always returned to it no matter who we were or how it was changed or with what difficulties, or ease, it could be reached. Paris was always worth it and you received return for whatever you brought to it. But this is how Paris was in the early days, when we were very poor and very happy.