“But she loved studying and books, the way other people love wine for its power to make you forget. What else did she have? She lived in a deserted, silent house. The sound of her own footsteps in the empty rooms, the silence of the cold streets beyond the closed windows, the rain and the snow, the early darkness, the green lamp beside her that burned throughout the long evenings and which she watched for hours on end until its light began to waver before her weary eyes: this was the setting for her life.” 

― Irène Némirovsky, The Wine of Solitude

“When you love someone as much as that, you don't believe they can die. You think your love protects them.” 

― Irène Némirovsky, The Wine of Solitude

“...for music alone can abolish differences

of language or culture between two people and invoke something indestructible within them.” 

― Irène Némirovsky, Suite Française