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Édouard Levé Quotes

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Famous Édouard Levé Quotes

“Competition does not drive me. I do things better for pleasure and without trying. I mistakenly studied difficult subjects that were no use to me when I might have studied the arts for pleasure, which would have smoothed my path. I wasted time trying to be good at math. I taught myself the things that mattered to me most: to write and to take pictures.”

WritingArtistPleasureEducationLearningAmbitionPhotographyCompetitionCreative ProcessSelf Taught
Book:Autoportrait
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“I would rather be bored alone than with someone else. I'm drawn to strange people. At a museum I look at people with the eyes of an artist, in the streets with my own. I can't remember the name of a person I have just met. In India, I travelled in a train compartment with a Swiss man I didn't know, we were crossing the plains of Kerala, I told him more about myself in several hours than I had told my best friends in several years, I knew I would never see him again, he was an ear without repercussions. Maybe I'm writing this book so I won't have to talk to anymore.”

PeopleIntrovertIntroversionSocialising
Book:Autoportrait
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“Your taste for literature did not come from your father, who read little, but from your mother, who taught it. You wondered how, being so different, they could have formed a union; but you noted that in you there was a mixture of the violence of the one and the gentleness of the other. Your father exerted his violence on others. Your mother was sympathetic to the suffering of others. One day you directed the violence you had inherited toward yourself. You dished it out like your father and you took it like your mother.”

DepressionSuicideParents
Book:Suicide
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“I do not fight. I have never punched anyone. I have stolen books once and once some paperclips, without really knowing why. I almost killed three passengers in my car by looking for a cassette in the glove compartment while I was going one-eighty on the highway. I wanted to write a book entitled 'In the car', made up of remarks recorded while driving. I have never filed a complaint with the police.”

LawFightingCrimePoliceDrivingCriminalLaw AbidingKleptomaniacsKleptomania
Book:Autoportrait
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“peru'ya gitmedin, siyah potinleri sevmedin, pembe çakıllı bir yolda yalınayak yürümedin. yapmadığın o kadar çok şey var ki insanın başı dönüyor, çünkü bizim de yapamayacağımız ne kadar çok şeyin olacağını gösteriyor. zamanımız yetmeyecek. sen beklememeyi seçtin. sonsuz sanıldığı için yaşama tutunulmasını sağlayan gelecekten vazgeçtin. insan tüm yeryüzünü kucaklamayı, tüm meyvelerin tadına bakmayı, tüm insanları sevmeyi isteyebilir. bizi umutla besleyen bu yanılsamalara sırt çevirdin.”

Intihar
Book:Suicide
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“Love has given me great pleasure but takes up too much time. I have often been in love. I am surprised when someone loves me. I do not consider myself handsome just because a woman thinks so. I sometimes feel like an imposter without knowing why, as if a shadow falls over me and I can't make it go away. If over time a woman I'm seeing starts to use the expressions I do, I may begin to pity her. I have left a woman because I didn't love her anymore and didn't like the way I was around her. I find something pleasant in the pain of a fading love. I have more good memories than bad ones. I masturbate less to pictures than to memories. I would like to have myself hypnotised by my wife, but I'm not married.”

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Author:Édouard Levé
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