Patrick Modiano
Novelist
1945-07-30
Books by Patrick Modiano
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Quotes by Patrick Modiano
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Something happens between a novel and its reader which is similar to the process of developing photographs, the way they did it before the digital age. The photograph, as it was printed in the darkroom, became visible bit by bit. As you read your way through a novel, the same chemical process takes place.
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That's the miracle of fiction. I use it to spray on certain moments or places from my youth.
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Recently, I looked back at my first manuscripts and was struck by the lack of space, of breath. That's exactly how it felt, back then... like I was suffocating.
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I quickly realised that it is difficult to get started when writing a novel. You have this dream of what you want to create, but it is like walking around a swimming pool and hesitating to jump in because the water is too cold.
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A novelist can never be his own reader, except when he is ridding his manuscript of syntax errors, repetitions, or the occasional superfluous paragraph.
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For a long time, I've had a recurring dream - I dream I don't have to write any more, that I'm free. I'm not free, alas; I'm still clearing the same terrain, with the impression that it's never finished.
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Because I find writing painful, I try to get it over with as fast as possible. But I write every day, or I lose the thread.
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I write in the most classical French because this form is necessary for my novels: to translate the murky, floating, unsettling atmosphere I wanted them to have, I had to discipline it into the clearest, most traditional language possible.
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