Rouen Quotes

“The same is true of stories and legends that haunt urban space like superfluous or additional inhabitants. They are the object of a witch-hunt, by the very logic of the techno-structure. But [the extermination of proper place names] (like the extermination of trees, forests, and hidden places in which such legends live) makes the city a 'suspended symbolic order.' The habitable city is thereby annulled. Thus, as a woman from Rouen put it, no, here 'there isn't any place special, except for my own home, that's all...There isn't anything.' Nothing 'special': nothing that is marked, opened up by a memory or a story, signed by something or someone else. Only the cave of the home remains believable, still open for a certain time to legends, still full of shadows. Except for that, according to another city-dweller, there are only 'places in which one can no longer believe in anything.”

“As in all great cataclysmic events, men are forced to show their true colours. Some will achieve the status of legend for their courage, brilliance and dedication; some will possess all the same qualities unacknowledged; others will be plodders doing their best; and there will be those who will be what they have always been -- sewer rats.”

“What takes more courage. To live ... or to die?”

“One day you will meet someone who will show you what you are made of. I only hope it is someone not forbidden to you ...”

“Like a brilliant shooting star, she had almost reached her zenith when her light was extinguished.”

“She was destroyed many years ago, La Belle, on the cobblestones of the alley beside the opera house ...”

“She did not realise that there could be a joy - a spiritual ecstasy- in the touch of a certain man, or that she would long for his touch with all her being”

“And what she does not know, what nobody else knows but you, is that I have a special place where I go to be with her; my first, my only love.”

“It proved what he had always instinctively known.Love is Forever.”