Georges Simenon / Writing

Georges Simenon
by Pablo García

WRITING

by Georges Simenon

Writing is not a profession but a vocation of unhappiness. I don't think an artist can ever be happy.“ 

Georges Simenon Interviewed in Paris Review, Summer 1955; reprinted in Malcolm Cowley (ed.) Writers at Work (New York: Viking Press, 1959) p. 146.

The fact that we are I don't know how many millions of people, yet communication, complete communication, is completely impossible between two of those people, is to me one of the biggest tragic themes in the world. 

Georges Simenon Interviewed in Paris Review, Summer 1955; reprinted in Malcolm Cowley (ed.) Writers at Work (New York: Viking Press, 1959) p. 153.

We are all potentially characters in a novel - with the difference that characters in a novel really get to live their lives to the full.

It just happened. As though a moment comes when it's both necessary and natural to make a decision that has long since been made.

The place smelled of fairgrounds, of lazy crowds, of nights when you stayed out because you couldn't go to bed, and it smelled like New York, of its calm and brutal indifference.

I never read contemporary fiction – with one exception: the works of Simenon concerned with Inspector Maigret.