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Quote by Virginie Despentes

“La vie se joue souvent en deux manches: dans un premier temps, elle t'endort en te faisant croire que tu gères, et sur la deuxième partie, quand elle te voit détendu et désarmé, elle repasse les plats et te défonce.”

Quote by Virginie Despentes

Book:Vernon Subutex 1
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Vernon Subutex 1

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Author

Virginie Despentes
Virginie Despentes

Virginie Despentes is a French writer born on June 13, 1969. Known for her sharp social criticism and feminist perspective, her works include novels such as 'Bitch' and 'Bad Girls'. more

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“You know, a government should be a good thing. The Anglo-Saxons and the Germans rejoice in the phenomenon of government. They think that the recipe for human happiness is that you should make your desires and actions concordant with those of the government. So a German and an American will try to make the government work for him, protect him, and he will be more than happy to murder to preserve that wonderful symbiosis. And if he has some money to invest, he will invest it in the government, buying government bonds. He does this regardless of whether his government happens to be trillions of dollars in debt—that is, practically bankrupt. Despite his rhetoric of private enterprise, a Westerner will invest in his government. And we, Eastern and Central Europeans, and particularly Slavs, we all consider our governments to be absolutely the worst in the world. We are ashamed of our governments, and, as a rule, our government is ashamed of us, trying to improve us statistically, to say that we work more and drink less than we do. We think that there's no greater obstacle to human happiness than the government. So even if we have an institution pregnant with democratic potential, such as workers' self-management, we never even bother to attend a meeting unless absolutely forced. And as for voting, we circle any name without looking at whose it is, out of spite. To a Slav, there is nothing more disgusting than voting. We have an aversion to investing trust in any human being. So how could we single out someone we haven't met but whom we know a priori to be a social upstart and climber? So we spend these workers' self-management meetings, where democracy could be practiced, in daydreams of sex and violence.”

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“Just think what will happen when the tournament is over and all the visitors have gone. The residents of Moscow, crowded by the housing crisis, will flee to your magnificent city. The capital will be transferred automatically to Vasyuki. The government will move here. Vasyuki will be renamed New Moscow, and Moscow will be Old Vasyuki. Leningraders and Kharkovians will grind their teeth, but they won't be able to do a thing about it. New Moscow will become the elegant cultural center of Europe, and soon, of the whole world.”

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“The tribe of clerks was an obvious one...the junior clerks of flash houses--young gentlemen with tight coats, bright boots, well-oiled hair, and supercilious lips. Setting aside a certain dapperness of carriage, which may be termed [i]deskism[/i] for want of a better word, the manner of these persons seemed to be an exact fac-simile of what had been the perfection of [i]bon ton[/i] about twelve or eighteen months before.”

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