Patrick Modiano quotes

Patrick Modiano is a French novelist renowned for his works exploring memory, identity, and the effects of World War II. His novels often delve into the mysteries of the past and personal history. He has received numerous literary accolades, including the Nobel Prize in Literature. Here are 48 of his quotes:

Ever since my childhood, I had seen my father carrying so many bags- suitcases with false bottoms, leather satchels or overnight bags, even those black briefcases that gave him a false air of repectability.... And I never knew just what was in them.

Patrick Modiano

I was always amazed when people were kind to us.

Patrick Modiano

When you are young, you neglect certain details that might become precious later.

Patrick Modiano

You can lose yourself or disappear in a big city. You can even change your identity and live a new life. You can indulge in a very long investigation to find a trace of malice, starting only with one or two addresses in an isolated neighbourhood. I have always been fascinated by the short note that sometimes appears on search records: Last known address. Themes of disappearance, identity and the passing of time are closely bound up with the topography of cities. That is why since the 19th century, cities have been the territory of novelists, and some of the greatest of them are linked to a single city: Balzac and Paris, Dickens and London, Dostoyevsky and Saint Petersburg, Tokyo and Nagai Kafū, Stockholm and Hjalmar Söderberg.

Patrick Modiano

Ever since, the Paris wherein I have tried to retrace her steps has remained as silent and deserted as it was on the day. I walk through empty streets. For me, they are always empty, even at dusk, during the rush hour, when the crowds are hurrying towards the mouth of metro. I think of her in spite of myself, sensing an echo of her presence in this neighbourhood or that. The other evening, it was near the Gare du Nord.

Patrick Modiano

He thought a photograph was nothing; that he should blend into the surroundings and become invisible, the better to work and capture –as he said natural light. One shouldn't even hear the click of Rolleiflex. He would have liked to conceal his camera. The death of his friend Robert Capa could in fact be explained, as he saw it, by this desire, the giddiness of blending into the surrounding once and for all.

Patrick Modiano

From one moment to another one can lose heart.

Patrick Modiano

The sign had been put up out of suspicion and a guilty conscience: "Military zone. Filming or photography prohibited."

Patrick Modiano

But I wasn't quite sure how to spell ‘ Cartaud, and I found listings for Cartau, Cartaud, Cartault, Cartaux, Carteau, Carteaud, Carteaux.

Patrick Modiano

Why, one wonders, does lightning strike in one place rather than another?

Patrick Modiano

Writing is a strange and solitary activity.

Patrick Modiano

A photograph can express silence.

Patrick Modiano

She committed suicide... "Why?" "She often told me, she was frightened of getting old."

Patrick Modiano

I always think twice before reading the biography of a writer I admire. Biographers sometimes latch onto small details, unreliable eyewitness accounts, character traits that appear puzzling or disappointing – all of which is like the crackling sound that messes with radio transmissions, making the music and the voices impossible to hear. It is only by actually reading his books that we gain intimacy with a writer. This is when he is at his best and he is speaking to us in a low voice without any of the static.

Patrick Modiano

This feeling of not belonging to the same sensation which grips you in a dream, you find yourself walking through an unfamiliar district. On waking you realize, little by little, that the pattern of its streets had overlaid with the one with which, in day time, you are familiar.

Patrick Modiano

Fredo Lampe. Am Rande Der Nacht. For me, name and title evoked those lighted windows from which you cannot tear your gaze. You are convinced that, behind them, somebody whom you have forgotten has been awaiting your return for years, or else that there is no longer anybody there. Only a lamp, left burning in the empty room.

Patrick Modiano

Has a biographer the right to suppress certain details under the pretext that he considers them superfluous? Or do they all have their importance, and must he present them one after the other, impartially, so that not a single one is left out, as in the inventory of a distraint? Unless the line of life, once it has reached its term, purges itself of all its useless and decorative elements. In which case, all that remains is the essential: the blanks, the silences and the pauses.

Patrick Modiano

There are moments when we are incapable of exchanging a single word with anybody...it's beyond us...

Patrick Modiano

But topographical details have a strange effect on me : instead of clarifying and sharpening images from past, they give me a harrowing sensation of emptiness and severed relationships.

Patrick Modiano

Circumstance and settings are of no importance. One day this sense of emptiness and remorse submerges you. Then, like a tide, it ebbs and disappears. But in the end it returns in force, and she couldn't shake it off. Nor could I?

Patrick Modiano

Then again, the term "Jew” meant nothing to the fourteen-year-old Dora. When it came down to it, what did people understand by the term "Jew”? For himself, he never gave it a thought. He was used to being put into this or that category by the authorities. Unskilled labourer. Ex –Austrian. French legionnaire. Non- suspect. Ex-serviceman 100% disabled. Foreign statute labourer. Jew.

Patrick Modiano

Of all the punctuation marks; he told me ellipses were his favorites.

Patrick Modiano