"They have failed and now, they can relax. In a few years they will once again be troubled by a great anxiety, but this time it will be a fear of death; it will have a strange effect on their tastes, it will make them indifferent, or eccentric, or moody, incomprehensible to their families, strangers to their children. But between the ages of forty and sixty they enjoy a precarious sense of tranquility.” 

― Irène Némirovsky, Fire in the Blood

“When older people get together there is something unflappable about them; you can sense they’ve tasted all the heavy, bitter, spicy food of life, extract its poison, and will now spend ten or fifteen years in a state of perfect equilibrium and enviable morality. They are happy with themselves. They have renounced the vain attempts of youth to adapt the world to their desires. ” 

― Irène Némirovsky, Fire in the Blood

“Memories of the past would return to us more often if only we sought them out, sought their intense sweetness. But we let them slumber within us, and worse, we let them die, rot, so much so that the generous impulses that sweep through our souls when we are twenty we later call naive, foolish…Our purest, most passionate loves take on the depraved appearance of sordid pleasure.” 

― Irène Némirovsky, Fire in the Blood

 “Quite apart from the fact that we usually pay so dearly for our follies, we should be generous about them, to ourselves and others. Yes, we always pay for them, and sometimes the smallest indiscretions cost as much as the largest.” 

“Quite apart from the fact that we usually pay so dearly for our follies, we should be generous about them, to ourselves and others. Yes, we always pay for them, and sometimes the smallest indiscretions cost as much as the largest.” 

― Irène Némirovsky, Fire in the Blood