Fictionalized

Literature quotes I find beautiful. Currently re-reading: Sartre's Nausea. All quotes are ones I come across organically in reading; if you ever have a question about a source, please ask.

[oflightandfiction]

I had thought out this sentence, at first it had been a small part of myself. Now it was inscribed on the paper, it took sides against me. I didn't recognize it any more. I couldn't conceive it again. It was there, in front of me; in vain for me to trace some sign of its origin. Anyone could have written it. But I... I wasn't sure I wrote it. The letters glistened no longer, they were dry. [...] Nothing was left but their ephemeral spark.

— Jean-Pual Sartre, Nausea

[oflightandfiction]

His judgment went through me like a sword and questioned my very right to exist. And it was true, I had always realized it; I hadn't the right to exist. I had appeared by chance, I existed like a stone, a plant or a microbe. My life put out feelers towards small pleasures in every direction. Sometimes it sent out vague signals; at other times I felt nothing more than a harmless buzzing.

— Jean-Pual Sartre, Nausea

[oflightandfiction]

I repeated with anguish: Where shall I go? where shall I go? Anything can happen. Sometimes, my heart pounding, I made a sudden right-about-turn: what was happening behind my back? Maybe it would start behind me and when I would turn around, suddenly, it would be too late. As long as I could stare at things nothing would happen: I looked at them as much as I could, pavements, houses, gaslights; my eyes went rapidly from one to the other, to catch them unawares, stop them in the midst of their metamorphosis. They didn't look too natural, but I told myself forcibly: this is a gaslight, this is a drinking fountain, and I tried to reduce them to their everyday aspect by the power of my gaze.

— Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

[oflightandfiction]

The rain has stopped, the air is mild, the sky slowly rolls up fine black images: it is more than enough to frame a perfect moment; to reflect these images, Anny would cause dark little tides to be born in our hearts. I don't know how to take advantage of the occasion: I walk at random, calm and empty, under this wasted sky.

— Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

[oflightandfiction]

Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

[oflightandfiction]

I slip Anny's letter back into my despatch case: she has done what she could; I cannot reach the woman who took it in her hands, folded and put it in the envelope. Is it possible even to think of someone in the past? As long as we loved each other, we never allowed the meanest of our instants, the smallest grief, to be detached and forgotten, left behind. Sounds, smells, nuances of light, even the thoughts we never told each other; we carried them all away and they remained alive: even now they have the power to give us joy and pain. Not a memory: an implacable, torrid love, without shadow, without escape, without shelter. Three years rolled into one. That is why we parted: we did not have enough strength to bear this burden. And then, when Anny left me, all of a sudden, all at once, the three years crumpled into the past. I didn't even suffer, I felt emptied out.

— Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

[oflightandfiction]

I felt that the success of the enterprise was in my hands: the moment had an obscure meaning which had to be trimmed and perfected; certain motions had to be made, certain words spoken: I staggered under the weight of my responsibility. I stared and saw nothing. I struggled in the midst of rites which Anny invented on the spot and tore them to shreds with my strong arms. At those times she hated me.

— Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

[oflightandfiction]

I do not know whether the whole world has suddenly shrunk or whether I am the one who unifies all sounds and shapes: I cannot even conceive of anything around me being other than what it is.

— Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

[oflightandfiction]

Nothing has changed yet everything is different. I can't describe it; it's like the Nausea and yet it's just the opposite: at last an adventure happens to me and when I question myself I see that it happens that I am myself and that I am here; I am the one who splits the night, I am as happy as the hero of a novel.

— Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

[oflightandfiction]

But for me there is neither Monday nor Sunday: there are days which pass in disorder, and then sudden lightning like this one.

— Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

[oflightandfiction]

[...] Something is beginning in order to end: adventure does not let itself be drawn out; it only makes sense when dead. I am drawn, irrevocably, towards this death which is perhaps mine as well. Each instant appears only as part of a sequence. I cling to each instant with all my heart: I know that it is unique, irreplaceable — and yet I would not raise my finger to stop it from being annihilated. [...] I grasp at each second, trying to suck it dry: nothing happens which I do not seize, which I do not fixate forever in myself, nothing, neither the fugitive tenderness of those lovely eyes, nor the noises of the street, nor the false dawn of early morning; and even so the minute passes and I do not hold it back, I like to see it pass. All of a sudden something breaks off sharply. The adventure is over, time resumes its daily routine. I turn; behind me, this beautiful melodious form sinks entirely into the past. It grows smaller, contracts as it declines, and now the end makes one with the beginning. Following this gold spot with my eyes I think I would accept — even if I had to risk death, lose a fortune, a friend —to live it all over again, in the same circumstances, from end to end. But an adventure never returns nor is prolonged.

— Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

[oflightandfiction]

I am alone now. Not quite alone. Hovering in front of me is still this idea. It has rolled itself into a ball, it stays there like a large cat; it explains nothing, it does not move, and contents itself with saying no. No, I haven't had any adventures. [...] I have never had adventures. Things have happened to me, events, incidents, anything you like. But no adventures.

— Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

[oflightandfiction]

I have never before had such a strong feeling that I was devoid of secret dimensions, confined within the limits of my body, from which airy thoughts float up like bubbles. I build memories with my present self. I am cast out, forsaken in the present: I vainly try to rejoin the past: I cannot escape.

Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

[oflightandfiction]

As for the square at Meknes, where I used to go every day, it's even simpler: I do not see it at all any more. All that remains is the vague feeling that it was charming, and these five words are indivisibly bound together: a charming square at Meknes. Undoubtedly, if I close my eyes or stare vaguely at the ceiling I can re-create the scene [...] But I am inventing all this to make out a case. [...] I don't see anything any more: I can search the past in vain, I can only find these scraps of images and I am not sure what they represent, whether they are memories or just fiction. There are many cases where even these scraps have disappeared: nothing is left but words: I could still tell stories, tell them too well [...] but these are only skeletons. There's the story of a person who does this, does that, but it isn't I, I have nothing in common with him. [...] New images are born in me, images such as people create from books who have never travelled. My words are dreams, that is all.

Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

[oflightandfiction]

I see the future. It is there, poised over the street, hardly more dim than then present. What advantage will accrue from its realisation? The old woman stumps further and further away, she stops, pulls at a grey lock of hair which escapes from her kerchief. She walks, she was there, now she is here... I don't know where I am any more: do I see her motions, or do I foresee them? I can no longer distinguish present from future and yet it lasts, it happens little by little; the old woman advances in the deserted street, shuffling her heavy, mannish brogues. This is time, time laid bare, coming slowly into existence, keeping us waiting, and when it does come making us sick because we realise it's been there for a long time. The old woman reaches the corner of the street [...] She is going to turn the corner, she turns — during an eternity.

Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

[oflightandfiction]

The Nausea has stayed down there, in the yellow light. I am happy: this cold is so pure, this night so pure: am I myself not a wave of icy air? With neither blood, nor lymph, nor flesh. Flowing down this long canal towards the pallor down there. To be nothing but coldness.

— Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

[oflightandfiction]

A long wall follows the fence. A wall without opening, without doors, without windows, a well which stops 200 yards further on, against a house. I have passed out of range of the lamp-post; I enter the black hole. Seeing the shadow at my feet lose itself in the darkness, I have the impression of plunging into icy water. Before me, at the very end, through the layers of black, I can make out a pinkish pallor: it is the Avenue Galvani. I turn back; behind the gaslamp, very far, there is a hint of light: that is the station with the four cafes. Behind me, in front of me, are people drinking and playing cards in pubs. Here there is nothing but blackness. Intermittently, the wind carries a solitary, faraway ringing to my ears. Familiar sounds, the rumble of motor cars, shouts, and the barking of dogs which hardly venture from the lighted streets, they stay within the warmth. But the ringing pierces the shadows and comes thus far: it is harder, less human than the other noises. I stop to listen. I am cold, my ears hurt; they must be all red. But I no longer feel myself; I am won over by the purity surrounding me; nothing is alive, the wind whistles, the straight lines flee into the night. The Boulevard Noir does not have the indecent look of bourgeois streets, offering their regrets to the passers-by. No one has bothered to adorn it: it is simply the reverse-side. [...] The Boulevard Noir is inhuman. Like a mineral. Like a triangle.

—Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea