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Jean-Dominique Bauby

Jean-Dominique Bauby Biography

Journalist

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“Far from such din, when blessed silence returns, I can listen to the butterflies that flutter inside my head. To hear them, one must be calm and pay close attention, for their wingbeats are barely audible. Loud breathing is enough to drown them out. This is astonishing: my hearing does not improve, yet I hear them better and better. I must have butterfly hearing.”

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Book:The Diving Bell and the Butterfly: A Memoir of Life in Death
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“The memory of that event has only just come back to me, now doubly painful: regret for a vanished past and, above all, remorse for lost opportunities. Mithra-Grandchamp is the women we were unable to love, the chances we failed to seize, the moments of happiness we allowed to drift away. Today it seems to me that my whole life was nothing but a string of those small near misses: a race whose result we know beforehand but in which we fail to bet on the winner.”

KnowsWholeMomentsSeemsTodayPastOpportunityLostMemoriesChanceResultsRaceFailingMissingEventsRegretPainfulWhole LifeWinnerStringsRemorseCome Back To MeMoments Of HappinessLost OpportunityNear MissesUnable To Love
Book:The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
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“Whereupon a strange euphoria came over me. Not only was I exiled, paralyzed, mute, half deaf, deprived of all pleasures, and reduced to the existence of a jellyfish, but I was also horrible to behold. There comes a time when the heaping up of calamities brings on uncontrollable nervous laughter - when, after a final blow from fate, we decide to treat it all as a joke.”

PleasureExistenceHalfFateStrangeLaughterJokesTreatsFinalsBlowHorribleNervousDeafDeprivedCalamityMuteParalyzedThere Comes A TimeEuphoriaUncontrollableJellyfish
Book:The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
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“Other letters simply relate the small events that punctuate the passage of time: roses picked at dusk, the laziness of a rainy Sunday, a child crying himself to sleep. Capturing the moment, these small slices of life, these small gusts of happiness, move me more deeply than all the rest. A couple of lines or eight pages, a Middle Eastern stamp or a suburban postmark . . . I hoard all these letters like treasure. One day I hope to fasten them end to end in a half-mile streamer, to float in the wind like a banner raised to the glory of friendship. It will keep the vultures at bay.”

ChildrenEndsMomentsMovingLinesSleepHalfMiddleEventsCryWindCoupleOne DayPagesGloryLettersRoseRaisedEightMilesTreasureRelateSundayPassagesLazinessEasternStampsFloatsRainyBannerDuskPassage Of TimeVultureSlice Of LifeSmall EventsRainy Sunday
Author:Jean-Dominique Bauby
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