Georges Simenon

Georges Joseph Christian Simenon (13 February 1903 – 4 September 1989) was a Belgian writer of crime novels, best known as the creator of Commissaire Maigret. His adult life was largely spent in France, the United States and Switzerland.

Simenon in 1965

Quotes

• Writing is not a profession but a vocation of unhappiness. I don't think an artist can ever be happy.
  • 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.
  • Interviewed in Paris Review, Summer 1955; reprinted in Malcolm Cowley (ed.) Writers at Work (New York: Viking Press, 1959) p. 153.

• Fellini, je crois que, dans ma vie, j'ai été plus Casanova que vous! J'ai fait le calcul, il ya un an ou deux. J’ai eu dix mille femmes depuis l’âge de treize ans et demi. Ce n’ést pas du tout un vice. Je n’ai aucun vice sexuel, mais j’avais besoin de communiquer.
  • You know, Fellini, I believe that, in my life, I have been more Casanova than you. I made the calculation a year or so ago that I have had 10,000 women since the age of thirteen and a half. It wasn't at all a vice. I have not the slightest sexual vice, but I have the need to communicate.
  • Interviewed by Federico Fellini in L'Express, February 21, 1977, and cited from Daniel Golay et al. Simenon, un autre regard (Lausanne: L'Hebdo, 1988) p. 104; translation from Fenton Bresler The Mystery of Georges Simenon (London: Heinemann, 1983) p. 239.

Criticism

• I never read contemporary fiction – with one exception: the works of Simenon concerned with Inspector Maigret.
  • T. S. Eliot in the Sunday Times, 1952; cited from David Chinitz T. S. Eliot and the Cultural Divide (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003) p. 56

External links

Georges Simenon Quotes