Top 38 Romain Gary Quotes About Life (LITERATURE)

16 Wise Romain Gary Quotes To Live By (WISDOM)

“Disease-carrying thoughts swarm and multiply in the dark and twisted labyrinths of our minds, and all that is needed is a mob and a good political slogan for the epidemic to be spread once again, with a burst of automatic weapons or a mushroom cloud.”
Romain Gary

Freedom is not the right to live as we please, but the right to find how we ought to live in order to fulfill our potential. — **Freedom** is not the right to live as we please, but the right to find how we ought to live in order to fulfill our potential.

The only way to deal with fear is to face it head-on. — The only way to deal with **fear** is to face it head-on.

Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear. — **Courage** is not the absence of **fear**, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.

Humor is an affirmation of dignity, a declaration of man's superiority to all that befalls him. — **Humor** is an affirmation of **dignity**, a declaration of man’s superiority to all that befalls him.

“With maternal love, life makes a promise at dawn that it can never hold. You are forced to eat cold food until your days end. After that, each time a woman holds you in her arms and against her chest, these are merely condolences. You always come back to yell at your mother’s grave like an abandoned dog. Never again, never again, never again.”
Romain Gary

As long as you live, you hope. You think that everything will just, get better. — As long as you live, you **hope**. You think that everything will just, get better.

All human wisdom is summed up in two words – wait and hope. — All human **wisdom** is summed up in two words – wait and **hope**.

“I too have often felt the need to understand it all; but I know my limits. In my life I’ve done more suffering than thinking — though I believe one understands better that way.”
Romain Gary

They thought I suffered from lack of exterior, when I suffered from excess of interior.

The great writers are those who see and feel life with an intensity that cannot be sustained by most of us. — The great writers are those who see and feel **life** with an intensity that cannot be sustained by most of us.

The avantgarde are people who don't exactly know where they want to go, but are the first to get there. — The avantgarde are people who don’t exactly know where they want to go, but are the first to get there.

If there is something that opens horizons, it is precisely ignorance.

When a war is won, it's the losers, not the winners, who are liberated. — When a war is won, it’s the losers, not the winners, who are liberated.

The only way to prove you are normal is to smash someone's face in. — The only way to prove you are normal is to smash someone’s face in.

Life is a book. You can't skip chapters, but you can write the ending. — **Life** is a **book**. You can’t skip chapters, but you can write the ending.

5 Romain Gary Quotes on Writing and Literature

“Sometimes I have the feeling that we live in a dubbed movie and everybody moves their lips but the voices don’t correspond. We are all post-synchronized and sometimes is very accomplished and looks natural.”
Romain Gary

Literature is greater than any of us, dammit.

Literature has always been the last refuge, in this world, for those who do not know where to lay their dreaming heads.

Reality is not an inspiration for literature. At its best, literature is an inspiration for reality. — Reality is not an **inspiration** for literature. At its best, literature is an inspiration for reality.

A writer's subconscious is one of the filthiest places there are: as a matter of fact, you can find the whole world there. — A writer’s subconscious is one of the filthiest places there are: as a matter of fact, you can find the whole world there.

2 Romain Gary Quotes on History

I see history as a relay race in which one of us, before dropping in his tracks, must carry one stage further the challenge of being a man. — I see history as a relay race in which one of us, before dropping in his tracks, must carry one stage further the **challenge** of being a man.

There is more to Jewish history than Auschwitz.

15 Romain Gary Quotes that Will Make You Think

“I sat day after day in my little room, waiting for inspiration to visit me, trying to invent a pseudonym that would express, in a combination of noble and striking sounds, our dream of artistic achievement, a pen name grand enough to compensate for my own feeling of insecurity and helplessness at the idea of everything my mother expected from me.”
Romain Gary

I've had a lot of fun. Good-bye, and thank you. — I’ve had a lot of fun. Good-bye, and thank you.

“I am weak, I say with no presumptions. I have no merit, I note it, that is all. There are times that I feel so weak there must be a mistake, and as I don’t know what I mean with this, I am not going to say anything else.”
Romain Gary

Besides, there's nothing like the truth to make a convincing lie. — Besides, there’s nothing like the **truth** to make a convincing lie.

“That night I hardly slept a wink, but turned over and over in my tent; never until then had I felt so alone or so deserted. Perhaps even the elephants are too small, I thought, as I stared into the darkness, and we need a far bigger and more affectionate presence at our side.”
Romain Gary

“That’s where his madness lies: in his incredible confidence, his total optimism. And it was true that Morel seemed to be borne forward by a bewildering, almost contagious, confidence. Fields was beginning to be affected by it in spite of himself, and to feel that nothing would ever happen to his Frenchman.”
Romain Gary

“Islam calls that ‘the roots of heaven’ and to the Mexican Indians it is the ‘tree of life’–the thing that makes both of them fall on their knees and raise their eyes and beat their tormented breasts. […] Our needs–for justice, for freedom and dignity–are roots of heaven that are deeply embedded in our hearts, but of heaven itself men know nothing but the gripping roots.”
Romain Gary

'Gari' in Russian means burn!. I want to test myself, a trial by fire, so that my 'I' is burned off. — ‘Gari’ in Russian means “burn!”. I want to test myself, a trial by fire, so that my ‘I’ is burned off.

“We were then truly at the very bottom – I won’t say at the bottom of the ‘abyss’ because I have since learned that the abyss is bottomless and that all records of falling and sinking can be broken there without ever exhausting the possibilities of that interesting institution.”
Romain Gary

I always had a strong reluctance to hurt people, which is always the best way of hurting oneself.

“My hints had, undoubtedly and unintentionally, made her feel insecure, guilty, inadequate, afraid that she was losing whatever it was that turned me on; in short, it aroused all the self-doubt so readily awakened in women after thousands of years of servitude. Hence my zeal in denying the effects of time was abetted by Laura’s complicity.”
Romain Gary

“Since when one has started dreaming, there were so many cries for help and so many bottles thrown into the sea, that it is amazing we still can see the sea when we should see only bottles.”
Romain Gary