Françoise Fabian Quotes

Maud Your lips are cold.

Jean-Louis So are yours. They're nice.

Maud Cold, like your feelings.

Jean-Louis Mathematics distract from God. A useless, intellectual diversion - worse than other diversions.

Maud Why worse?

Jean-Louis Because its completely abstract and thus inhuman.

Maud What I don't like about you is that you always dodge the issue. You don't face up to things. A shamefaced Christian combined with a shamefaced ].

Jean-Louis Women have taught me a lot, morally speaking. That sounds...

Maud A little vulgar.

Jean-Louis Yes. It would be silly to generalize about particular cases but each girl revealed a new moral problem which I had never faced up to before. It would be good for me to be shaken out of my moral lethargy.

Maud You could have ignored the physical aspect for the moral.

Jean-Louis Yes, but, the moral aspect would never have arisen if - Well, I know it's never impossible but the physical and moral are inseparable, let's face it.

Maud Perhaps it was the trick of the devil?

Jean-Louis Then I was caught. Yes, in a way, I was caught.

Maud Don't you want to be a saint?

Jean-Louis Not at all.

Maud You do shock me.

Jean-Louis So you've said.

Maud You're the most outrageous person I've met. Religion has always left me cold. I'm neither for nor against it. But people like you prevent me from taking it seriously. All that really concerns you is your respectability. Staying in a woman's room after midnight is dreadful. It would never occur to you to stay because I'm lonely. To establish a slightly less conventional relationship even if we should never meet again. This I find stupid - very stupid and not very Christian.

Jean-Louis It's nothing to do with religion. I just thought you might be tired.

Maud Do you still think so?

Jean-Louis Ideally, one should never have to leave people. One shouldn't have to forget people. There should be one love, no other - not even platonic.

Maud Especially not platonic.

Maud Don't be childish. Lie beside me. Outside, or inside - if I'm not too repulsive.

Jean-Louis I'll take the armchair.

Maud You'll get a cramp. Are you afraid? Of yourself? Of me? I swear I won't touch you, and you I thought you had self-control.

Maud Do you really want my life story? Well, I had a lover and my husband had a mistress. Curiously enough, she was rather your sort: very moral, very Catholic. Not hypocritical, not calculating - very sincere. Yet I hated her like poison.

Maud What I have against you is your lack of spontaneity.

Jean-Louis I open my heart to you. What more do you want?

Maud I don't like your love with conditions attached.