The Scapegoat Quotes
"It was all too easy to lose oneself in a past half real, half imaginary, and so be blind to the present."
"Insects, animals, men, women, children, we live by greed alone. It is not very pretty, but what of it? The thing to do is to minister to the greed, and to give people what they want."
"The real meaning of history would have escaped me, because I had never been close enough to people."
"I wondered how close I was, for one brief second, to an answer to my turmoil, doubt, distress; closer even amongst the patterned fields under the darkening sky than I might have been had I followed that first forgotten impulse and driven northward to la Grande-Trappe."
"The solidity of haystacks, streaky white, usually hard and clear-cut on the horizon, merged into the soil, becoming part of it, and long avenues of poplars, with shivering, falling leaves, came out of nowhere and disappeared again."
"I was an alien, I was not one of them. Years of study, years of training, the fluency with which I spoke their language, taught their history, described their culture, had never brought me closer to the people themselves."
"We laugh to stave off fear, or we are attracted because we are repulsed; in a bedroom farce it is disgust at what might happen – disgust mingled with a furtive excitement – that makes the audience scream."
"One had no right to play about with people’s lives. One should not interfere with their emotions. A word, a look, a smile, a frown, did something to another human being, waking response or aversion, and a web was woven which had no beginning and no end, spreading outward and inward too, merging, entangling, so that the struggle of one depended upon the struggle of the other."
"A business is like a home: it must have a head, a core, a centre, and depending upon that centre so it either thrives or falls to pieces."
"People are very different today, nobody wants to work any more. If I didn’t work I should die."
"The loyalty in Julie’s eyes, the patient acceptance in André’s, the swift change from hostility to something near admiration in Paul’s, and still more in Jacques’, the welcome camaraderie in the workmen’s, all this had not been given to me but to Jean de Gué."
"It might have been an inspiration to take on the role of someone fine – the change of skin would have acted as a spur to endeavour."
"I felt it neither incongruous nor strange to be in vest and pants while she was in a trailing wrapper."
"‘You mean,’ said Renée, ‘that we must meet somewhere else? But how? Where are we to go?’"
"‘You would never do it,’ he said. ‘Too many people depend on you.’"
"Remember, if you are depressed and low in spirit, it’s a good sign. It shows that the bon Dieu isn’t far away."
"I had become part of the bathroom background, and so had she."
"It’s a good thing, now and again, to take stock of oneself in life."
"If you weren’t so infernally lazy you would do it yourself."
"You make a mistake leaving so much of the administrative part to your brother. If you weren’t so infernally lazy you would do it yourself."
"‘It’s only,’ she said, ‘I sometimes wonder if your lack of feeling for the verrerie is because you don’t want to think about it too deeply. You don’t want to be reminded of what happened to Maurice Duval.’"
"The only way to escape responsibility for failure was to become someone else."
"Everyone in the world tries for boys – it’s good for finance."
"We struggle to climb, or we struggle to fall. The thing is to discover which way we’re going."
"There is no end to the evil in ourselves, just as there is no end to the good."
"I hadn’t realized that. Actually, after the first shock they would soon have found employment."
"It’s just a question of shock. A burn like that is a very painful thing."
"It puts me in the right state for Mass tomorrow."
"‘What were you thinking about?’ I asked. ‘This morning I was thinking about the shoot and what fun it would be,’ she said, ‘which I’m sure was a sin in itself. The rest of the day I’ve been thinking about you.’"
"‘The watch was really an excuse,’ I said. ‘I didn’t want to shoot tomorrow. I didn’t know how to get out of it, and then, standing by the bonfire, the idea came to me to burn my hand. It was simple, but stupid. I did it rather too effectively, and it hurt more than I intended.’"
"‘Life is a great problem,’ she said. ‘I agree.’ ‘Do you think it would be easier to be somebody else?’ she asked. ‘That’s what I’d like to find out.’"
"‘I’m not sorry. Only sick of the whole mess-up.’ ‘Gran’mie will be ill now. She’ll have one of her bad turns. Why were you so cross with her? She only did it for you.’"
"‘Very natural,’ she said, ‘since he gave you the watch and he was shot. The two things go together.’"
"‘Is it because you don’t want to kill?’ she asked. ‘Is it suddenly a sin to you to take any life, even a bird’s?’"
"‘I’ve had the most atrocious dream,’ she said."
"The Sainte Vierge tells me you are unhappy, and are suffering now for wrong done in the past, so I am going to pray that all your sins may be visited upon me, who, being young and strong, can bear them better."
"All sense of time was lost. I did not know how long I had walked in the woods."
"Nothing was certain but that disaster, swift and sudden, had come upon the château when it was empty."
"And lastly, ‘The hospital in Villars may not be prepared for emergencies. They should have taken her to Le Mans.’"
"Everything I had said, everything I had done, had brought this family closer to disaster and to pain. Mine was the responsibility, mine the guilt."
"She might have been sleeping. She did not look like a person dead."
"I did not pray, but I tried to think if I had said anything to Françoise in the week that had been deliberately unkind."
"It is preferable to use the blood straight from the laboratory."
"If you dream tonight, I shall be here. It won't matter."
"Death was an executioner, lopping a flower before it bloomed."
"I always said Blanche had a head for business."
"It’s a matter for your own conscience and for God."
"We had enough of them during the war, and during the Occupation too."
"You give it away, but the trouble is, it stays with you just the same."
"Like water in a well. The spring remains, under the dried depths."