Tatiana De Rosnay Quotes

How was it possible that entire lives could change, could be destroyed, and that streets and buildings remained the same, she wondered.

I will start with the tree. Because everything begins, and ends, with the tree. The tree is the tallest one. It was planted way before the others. I'm not sure how old it is, exactly. Perhaps three or four hundred years old. It is ancient and powerful. It has weathered terrible storms, braced against unbridled winds. It is not afraid.
The tree is not like the others. It has its own rhythm. Spring starts later for it, while all the others are already blossoming. Come late April, the new oval leaves sprout slowly, on the top and middle branches only. Otherwise, it looks dead. Gnarled, gray, and withered. It likes to pretend to be dead. That's how clever it is. Then, suddenly, like a huge explosion, all the buds flourish. The tree triumphs with its pale green crowns.

Emile was not like you, not attached to houses. For you, houses are like people, are they not, they have a soul, a heart, they live and breathe. Houses remember.

You were a quiet man, yet you took up a vast amount of silent space and that was what I missed.

When you grew up in France in the 1970s and 80s, the Vel' d'Hiv wasn't part of the history program.

Zakhor. Al Tichkah. Remember. Never forget.

Sometimes I get to see a movie that's adapted from a book that I haven't heard about or that I love the movie so much that I will, of course, read the book.

It's a complicated process being so bilingual. Sometimes it's a mere word or sentence that comes to me, if I'm writing the book in English, in French. It's not always easy to deal with. Sometimes even during an interview somebody can ask me a question in English that I want to answer in French and vice versa - that's the story of my life!

The eyes of a woman in the face of a ten-year-old girl.

Quick, children, come now. You are safe here. You are safe with us.

Finally, the lock clicked and she tugged the secret door open. A rotten stench hit her like a fist. She drew away. The boy at her side recoiled, afraid. Sarah fell to her knees. Sarah could not speak, she could only quiver, her fingers covering her eyes, her nose, blocking out the smell ... She sank to her knees again and she screamed at the top of her lungs, she screamed, for her mother, for her father, screamed for Michel.

You get attached to places, you know. Like people, I suppose.

I think books and movies are going to go a long way together in the future. I think we writers are very important material for directors.

She couldn't imagine why there was such a difference between those children and her. She couldn't imagine why she and all these other people with her had to be treated this way. Who decided this, and what for?

Sometimes, Miss Jarmond, it's not easy to bring back the past. There are unpleasant surprises. The truth is harder than ignorance

I'm a writer. I'm not an actress.

You know what I find most shocking about the Vel'd'Hiv?" Guillaume said. "Its code name."
I knew the answer to that, thanks to my extensive reading.
Operation Spring Breeze, " I murmured.

Forget the books you want to write. Think only of the book you are writing. - HENRY MILLER

the Rey family grave at the

I took his hand and pressed it hard. I could not bear to look at him any longer, so I closed my eyes and put his hand against my cheek. I cried with him. I felt his fingers grow wet with my tears, but I kept his hand there.

Why Noirmoutier? He wondered as the car sped on and Mélanie hummed to "Let It Be." He had never considered himself a nostalgic person. He had never looked back. But since his divorce he had changed. Relentlessly he had found himself thinking more about the past then the present or future.

You're playing with Pandora's box. Sometimes it's better not to open it. Sometimes, it's better not to know.

Never cry in front of these men. Never cry. Ever. It's only hair. Hair will grow back.

I wanted to say sorry, I wanted to tell her I could not forget the roundup, the camp, Michel's death, and the direct train to Auschwitz that had taken her parents away forever. Sorry for what? he had retaliated, why should I, an American, feel sorry, hadn't my fellow countrymen freed France in June 1944? I had nothing to be sorry for, he laughed.
I had looked at him straight in the eyes.
Sorry for not knowing. Sorry for being forty-five years old and not knowing.

My grandmother was fifteen the day of the roundup. She was told she was free because they were only taking small children between two and twelve with their parents. She was left behind. And they took all the others. Her little brothers, her little sister, her mother, her father, her aunt, her uncle. Her grandparents. It was the last time she ever saw them. No one came back No one at all.

There had been over four thousand Jewish children penned in the Vel' d'Hiv', aged between two and twelve. Most of the children were French, born in France. None of them came back from Auschwitz.

The girl wondered if her parents had been right to protect her from everything, if they had been right not to explain why so many things had changed for them since the start of the war... Nobody would tell her. Nobody would explain. She hated being treated like a baby. She hated the voices being lowered when she entered the room. If they had told her, if they had told her everything they knew, wouldn't that have made today easier?

And so I write this for you, My Sarah. With the hope that one day, when you're old enough, this story that lives with me, will live with you as well. When a story is told, it is not forgotten. It becomes something else, a memory of who we were; the hope of what we can become.

She bent her chin to her chest. She mumbled something I did not catch. It sounded like, Shame on us all for not having stopped it.

Be brave, my sweet love. Be brave, as brave as you can

was empty, what had happened to the family's

I'm used to promoting books, but a movie is a very different thing. You have to go to film festivals and wear fancy clothes and try and look glamorous and intelligent when you're just terrified and you want to go home!

Are you afraid in there?" she said softly, as the men called out for them.
"No," he said. "I'm not afraid. You lock me in. They won't get me."
She closed the door on the little white face, turned the key in the lock. Then she slipped the key into her pocket. The lock was hidden by a pivoting device shaped like a light switch. It was impossible to see the outline of the cupboard in the paneling of the wall. Yes, he'd be safe there. She was sure of it.
The girl murmured his name and laid her palm flat on the wooden panel.
"I'll come back for you later. I promise.

The girl wondered: These policemen ... didn't they have families, too? Didn't they have children? Children they went home to? How could they treat children this way? Were they told to do so, or did they act this way naturally? Were they in fact machines, not human beings? She looked closely at them. They seemed of flesh and bone. They were men. She couldn't understand.

I wanted to cry, but the tears did not come.

I caught a glimpse of my face in the mirror as we glided p. I looked as eroded as the groaning lift. What had happened to the fresh-faced belle from Boston, Mass.? The woman who stared back at me was at the dreaded age between forty-five and fifty, that no-man's land of sag, oncoming wrinkle, and stealthy approach of menopause.
"I hate this elevator, too," I said grimly.
Zoe grinned and pinched my cheek.
"Mom, even Gwyneth Paltrow would look like hell in that mirror."
I had to smile. That was such a Zoe-like remark.

Did she not have it all, the beauty, the brains, the breeding, the brilliant marriage? Yet I felt a tangible sadness lurking within ...

The opening lines of a book are so important. You really need to somehow charm your reader. If you can't get her attention in the first pages, you may have lost her. There has to be an ambience.