Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt Quotes

No, you're mistaken. Not 'What filthy weather' but 'It's a fine rainy day.

Your love for her belongs to you. It's yours. Even if she refuses it, she cannot change it. She isn't benefiting from it, thats all. What you give, Momo, is yours forever. What you keep is lost for all time!"-Monsieur Ibrahim

That day, she became categorically certain of two things: that he annoyed her, profoundly, and, if she could, she would never leave him.

I can spend the day without writing or reading, but I can't spend a day without listening to music. I listen to music on a Walkman; it's from the 19th century, I know.

In Brussels, you are able to have a lot of appointments in a day. In Paris, you can have one, two, maybe three, but you spend all your time on the road, in the car or in the suburbs. In Brussels, everything is easy. It's not a very big city, and the people are very quiet and warm.

I have some beautiful 20th-century drawings and a few paintings, but I'm not a collector, and I'm not particularly attached to objects.

What you give, Momo, is yours forever. What you keep is lost for all time.

You have to really use your imagination to refresh your daily life.

Monsieur Ibrahim: To find out if a country is rich or poor, look at the bins. If there are bins and no rubbish, it's rich. If there's rubbish by the bins, it's neither rich nor poor... it's touristy. And if there's rubbish but no bins, then it's poor.

She had pronounced the words "New Books" with caution and regret, articulating them reluctantly, as if they were vulgar, even obscene words. As I listened to her, I realised that that it was indeed a commercial term, used to designate an item in fashion, but inappropriate to define a literary work; I also realised that to her eyes I was nothing but an author of 'New Books' a supplier in a way. "But novels by Daudet or Maupassant - weren't they 'New Books' when they came out?" I asked.

"Time has given them their place", she replied, as though I had just said something insolent.

Balthazar Balsan is not a self-portrait. If he was, I'd have made the character more flattering.

Everything in life can be tiring and tiresome if we don't have the ability to look at it as if it's the first time we've ever done it.

Momo: [reading Ibrahim's will] This is my will and testament. I, Ibrahim Demirdji, hereby leave all my goods to Moses Schmitt, my son Momo because he chose me as his father and because I've given him everything I've learned in this life. Now you too will know what's in my Koran, Momo. It's all there is to know.

I really enjoy spending Sunday evenings with friends, because Sunday evenings are always frightening. You are obsessed by the fact that you are working again the next day. And sometimes you get the blues. I always decide to spend it with friends. It's very nice.

When I start a book, it's every day. There is no Saturday, no Sunday. It's every day, because if I stop one day, I'm afraid of losing the book and losing the energy.