Zitate von Romain Gary

„Männer sterben manchmal viel früher als sie begraben sind.“

—  Romain Gary

„There is more to Jewish history than Auschwitz.“

—  Romain Gary

Interview (1970), republished in Le Judaïsme n’est pas une Question de Sang [Judaism Isn’t About Blood] (2008) by Les éditions de l’Herne, as quoted in "A Chameleon on Show" in Forward (12 January 2011) http://www.forward.com/articles/134609/

„I want to test myself, a trial by fire, so that my I is burned off.“

—  Romain Gary

La Nuit Sera Calme [The Night Will Be Calm] (1974)
Kontext: Gari in Russian means "burn!"… I want to test myself, a trial by fire, so that my I is burned off.

„If there is something that opens horizons, it is precisely ignorance.“

—  Romain Gary

„Reality is not an inspiration for literature. At its best, literature is an inspiration for reality.“

—  Romain Gary

„Literature is greater than any of us, dammit.“

—  Romain Gary

„As long as you live, you hope. You think that everything will just… get better.“

—  Romain Gary, buch Au-delà de cette limite votre ticket n'est plus valable

Quelle: Au-delà de cette limite votre ticket n'est plus valable

„They thought I suffered from lack of exterior, when I suffered from excess of interior“

—  Romain Gary, buch Gros-Câlin

Quelle: Gros-Câlin

„I’ve had a lot of fun. Good-bye, and thank you.“

—  Romain Gary

The Life and Death of Émile Ajar (1980), an essay written prior to his suicide, as quoted in "Romain Gary: A Short Biography" by Madeleine Schwartz, at The Harvard Advocate http://www.theharvardadvocate.com/content/romain-gary-short-biography
Kontext: The gossip that came back to me from fashionable dinners where people pitied poor Romain Gary, who must be a little sad, a little jealous of the meteoric rise in the literary firmament of his cousin Emile Ajar… I’ve had a lot of fun. Good-bye, and thank you.

„Men sometimes die much earlier than they are burried.“

—  Romain Gary, buch Au-delà de cette limite votre ticket n'est plus valable

Quelle: Au-delà de cette limite votre ticket n'est plus valable

„Humour is an affirmation of dignity, a declaration of man's superiority to all that befalls him.“

—  Romain Gary

As quoted in The Harper Book of Quotations (1993) by Robert I. Fitzhenry, p. 223

„When a war is won, it's the losers, not the winners, who are liberated.“

—  Romain Gary, buch Tulipe

Tulipe (1946)

„I sat day after day in my little room, waiting for inspiration to visit me, trying to invent a pseudonym that would express, in a combination of noble and striking sounds, our dream of artistic achievement, a pen name grand enough to compensate for my own feeling of insecurity and helplessness at the idea of everything my mother expected from me.“

—  Romain Gary, buch Promise at Dawn

Promise at Dawn (1960) as quoted in "Great Pretenders" by Emma Garman in Tablet (31 October 2007) http://www.tabletmag.com/arts-and-culture/books/906/great-pretenders/

„A writer’s subconscious is one of the filthiest places there are: as a matter of fact, you can find the whole world there.“

—  Romain Gary

The Dance of Genghis Cohn (1967)

„Disease-carrying thoughts swarm and multiply in the dark and twisted labyrinths of our minds, and all that is needed is a mob and a good political slogan for the epidemic to be spread once again, with a burst of automatic weapons or a mushroom cloud.“

—  Romain Gary

Introduction to The Plague (1946) by Albert Camus, as translated in a 1962 edition.

„The bombs I dropped on Germany between 1940 and 1944 maybe killed a Rilke or a Goethe or a Hölderin in his cradle. And yes, of course, if it had to be done over, I would do it again. Hitler had condemned us to kill. Not even the most just causes are ever innocent.“

—  Romain Gary

As quoted in Hope and Memory: Lessons from the Twentieth Century (2003) by Tzvetan Todorov, p. 217

„During the war he was an airman and slaughtered civilians from on high.“

—  Romain Gary, buch Hocus Bogus

Pseudo (1976)