When you pretend to be in love you run the risk of feeling it, he who parodies without proper precautions ends up the victim of his own cunning. And even if he takes them, he ends up a victim just the same. As Pascal said: “It is almost impossible to feign love without turning into a lover.” […] That said, I must also warn you that when you hear me say, for example, that there was never any end to Paris, I will most likely be saying it ironically. But, anyway, I hope not to overwhelm you with too much irony. The kind that I practice has nothing to do with that which arises from desperation — I was stupidly desperate enough when I was young. I like a kind of irony I call benevolent, compassionate, like what we find, for example, in the best of Cervantes. I don’t like ferocious irony but rather the kind that vacillates between disappointment and hope. Okay?
— Enrique Vila-Matas, Never Any End to Paris.
The thing was all the kissing and the holding that was going on in Paris. And it was so romantic, just to be there and see them, even though I was twenty-one and sort of not romantic. But I really loved it, the way the people would just stand under a tree kissing; and they weren’t mauling at each other, they were just kissing.
— John Lennon, interview w/ David Sheff for Playboy. (September, 1980)
J’aime the kisses the Parisians give one another, touching their cheeks, and allowing men to do the same, though they never lock their arms in embrace.
— Henri Cole, Orphic Paris.
After a late lunch, Linda launched into a long paean to the joys of living in England. When she was finished, she turned to John and said, “Don’t you miss England?”
“Frankly,” John replied, “I miss Paris.”
— May Pang, Loving John. (1983)
If so, how I must be striving to not be annihilated by Paris, which I find so overwhelming. My face looks solitary and calm. […] What perplexing messages memories can yield. As I write this, their odors, their shadows, and their sweet music are almost too much to bear.
— Henri Cole, Orphic Paris.
“I don’t have any friends!” John reminded me. “Friendship is a romantic illusion!” He said that he had learned this the hard way after the breakup of his relationship with Paul McCartney, whom he had once regarded as his close friend.
— Fred Seaman, The Last Days of John Lennon. (1991)
To the most romantic corner in Paris
where I left my heart and my illusion.
— Octavio Paz. (trans. Henri Cole)
I think, in one way, all of us were under a slight illusion that we might… Maybe it wasn’t an illusion, and maybe had we pushed harder, we would’ve gotten what we wanted, but I’m not sure we – anybody really knew what we wanted. We knew we didn’t like what was happening, but nobody knew quite what – what it was that we wanted. ’Cause we’d never had it.
— John Lennon, interview w/ Jim Ladd. (October 10th, 1974)
Everything ends, I thought.
Everything except Paris, I say now. Everything ends except Paris, for there is never any end to Paris, it is always with me, it chases me, it is my youth. Wherever I go, it travels with me, it’s a feast that follows me. There can be an end to this summer, it will end. The world can go to ruin, it will be ruined. But to my youth, to Paris, there is never any end. How terrible.
— Enrique Vila-Matas, Never Any End to Paris.
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