Here are some of my favorite lines from the book:
"It's a story that can only interest men and even then only certain men…"
"At least once in one's life one
must do something really stupid, fall in love until one almost dies of
it, be charitable to the point of embracing a leper, generous to the point
of risking one's life for an enemy, disinterested to the point of leaving
one's winnings on the gaming table.
His ilk don't lead to anything, they risk
their own lives and other people's for nothing … or even worse, just
in order to rediscover that exceptional moment in their lives when everything
was possible. They are the victims of their own myth who have fallen under
a shadow or into the mud and struggle to get out of it but are unable
to do so and cause all sorts of disasters to everyone around them because
they have acquired, perhaps on account of that setback, a sort of charm
which it is difficult to resist."
"He who buys must sacrifice his money to obtain goods and he who sells must sacrifice his goods to obtain money. Everything is modeled on commerce, everything is based on exchange, whether it is politics or love, one's family or one's relations with the gods and the djinns."
"The war in Indochina is a war of
sergeants, subalterns and captains. Those are the ones who get killed;
the rest benefit."
"In the army you don't choose your
friends, you are saddled with comrades you can either like or dislike
but who are soon indispensable to you…The sensation of never being
alone, of being bound to others by certain gestures and habits, by a special
sort of behavior to one another."
"A fellow feeling for all those who
revolt against an established order, even if this order has been established
by his own country…"
"The Viet-minhs have created a remarkable
type of army, a total army, in which every soldier is at one and the same
time a propagandist, a schoolmaster and a policeman, every officer an
administrator, a priest and an agronomist.
To tackle an army like this would have required an army of the same type,
a sort of military order, otherwise defeat was inevitable. Naturally I
don't like being defeated, I don't like being commanded by incapable leaders,
but I should dislike it even more if I had to become a monk-soldier or
turn into a lay preacher of some new doctrine or other. He has cured me
for life of the communist temptation, of all forms of collective existence
and at the same time of the army."
"The masses fight in order to achieve
dignity. That's false, an intellectual conception, valid for either you
or me. The masses are like women and merely want to have attention paid
to them, to be fondled, kissed or beaten - anything provided they are given
the impression that they exist.
I've slept with lots of women, often because
they didn't understand me and believed that by surrendering to me they
were stealing my secrets. As though I carried them around in my trouser
pocket! Absurd, and yet that's how it is. But the masses have turned aside
from my secrets. I had too much respect for them."
"This time he was alone, rejected
by everyone, therefore free."
"Every race in the world will one day melt together in communism: the world will be nothing more than a vast Eurasia, by blood and in mind."
"The Meos had saved me because I was a captive who had escaped. They didn't give a damn about my being French. I wish I could wander along the streets of Hanoi wearing that dog collar which is the last sign of a free man."
"I don't want any women in my life and least of all a woman of that sort. I want my pals and sometimes a girl to spend the night with, I want to see the sun rise after fighting and marching all night, I want dreamless sleep when I'm at my last gasp…and now I want to drink."
"That intersection is always crowded
with women and children and itinerant vendors. They will all swarm together
as the procession moves past. They're not guilty."
"Yes they are, just as every drop of
water is responsible for what the sea is doing."
"In accepting certain professions,
like a priest's or an officer's, or certain public appointments, you consent
at the same time to being a victim of injustice. Armies can survive any
kind of defeat but they never recover from lack of discipline."
"When you want to build a house, you've got to shape the stones so that they fit perfectly together. If you build in brick, you dry your clay in moulds. We've got a nation to build and our materials are the amorphous masses, these pebbles of every shape and size. We'll have to shape them, mould them, these worthy masses, and cleanse them of the habits of facility which they have inherited during a century of occupation from masters who were on the whole easy-going because they were lazy and choosy. And that's not going to please them at all…"
"Women are curious creatures. Because
they kiss or make love with a man who has fought, suffered or done more
than the others, they believe that some of the merit of this glory and
suffering rubs off on them. Women did not belong to the same species as
men, so there was no point in expecting intelligence or loyalty from them.
One merely had to adorn them with dresses and jewels, bask in the music
of their voices and attach no importance at all to the words that issued
from those painted lips."