Why writing and why Paris

I will not pretend I have something to say that the rest of the world needs to hear. I just wish I can say something others would remember. But I don't really care about others. I write because I can't bear the thought that I cannot.

Writing in Paris is not about writing nor about Paris. I know I can't write. I don't need to travel halfway around the world to figure that out or even to change that. At the end of two months, if I ever make it there and stay that long, there won't be a novel coming out or even a draft of a novel forming. I go to Paris because I can't bear the thought that I'm not already there.

There goes a happy life.

"The folly of mistaking a paradox for a discovery, a metaphor for proof, a torrent of verbiage for a spring of capital truths, and oneself for an orator, is inborn in us."

—Paul Valéry, Introduction to the Method of Leonardo da Vinci

"Giving birth to a book is always an abominable torture for me, because it cannot answer my imperious need for universality and totality."

—Émile Zola

"We'll always have Paris."

—Humphrey Bogart, Casablanca (1942)

"In Paris they just simply opened their eyes and stared when we spoke to them in French! We never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language."

—Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

"There is but one Paris and however hard living may be here, and if it became worse and harder even—the French air clears up the brain and does good—a world of good."

—Vincent van Gogh, The Complete Letters of Vincent van Gogh

"Nowhere is one more alone than in Paris... and yet surrounded by crowds. Nowhere is one more likely to incur greater ridicule. And no visit is more essential."

—Marguerite Duras, Tourists in Paris

"Every city has a sex and an age which have nothing to do with demography. Rome is feminine. So is Odessa. London is a teenager, an urchin, and, in this, hasn't changed since the time of Dickens. Paris, I believe, is a man in his twenties in love with an older woman."

—John Berger, Imagine Paris

"Back home everyone said I didn't have any talent. They might be saying the same thing over here, but it sounds better in French."

—Gene Kelly, An American in Paris (1951)

"Writing and travel broaden your ass if not your mind and I like to write standing up."

—Ernest Hemingway, Selected Letters

"If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast."

—Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast