Georges Perec Quotes & Sayings

#1. Every library answers a twofold need, which is often also a twofold obsession: that of conserving certain objects (books) and that of organizing them in certain ways

Georges Perec

#2. It is on a day like this one,
a little later a little earlier
that you descover without surprise
that something is wrong
that you don't know how to live
and you will never know

Georges Perec

#3. why count the buses? probably because they're recognizable and regular:they cut up time, they punctuate the background noise; ultimately, they're foreseeable

Georges Perec

#4. Despite the Saint-Nectaire, this analysis would be absolutely reasonable if it did not sin grievously by omission

Georges Perec

#5. Above all, they had the cinema. And this was probably the only area where they had learned everything from their own sensibilities.

Georges Perec

#6. It seems we only sleep well in our own bed.

Georges Perec

#7. To write: to try meticulously to retain something, to cause something to survive; to wrest a few precise scraps from the void as it grows, to leave somewhere a furrow, a trace, a mark or a few signs.

Georges Perec

#8. I have neither one nor the other, and that has been going on for so long now that I have stopped wondering whether it is hate or love which gives us the strength to continue this life of lies, which provides the formidable energy that allows us to go on suffering, and hoping.

Georges Perec

#9. A gap will yawn, achingly, day by day, it will turn into a colossal pit, an abyss without foundation, a gradual invasion of words by margins, blank and insignificant, so that all of us, to a man, will find nothing to say.

Georges Perec

#10. The idea occurred to him when he was twenty. At first it was only a vague idea, a question looming - what should I do? - with an answer taking shape: nothing.

Georges Perec