When you are young , you neglect certain details that might become precious later. - Patrick Modiano

Writing is a strange and solitary activity.

Fredo Lampe. Am Rande Der Nacht. For me, name and title evoked those lighted windows from which you cannot tear your gaze. You are convinced that, behind them, somebody whom you have forgotten has been awaiting your return for years, or else that there is no longer anybody there. Only a lamp, left burning in the empty room.

We passed the Gardens and turned down Avenue de New York. There, under the embankment trees,I had the unpleasant sensation that I was dreaming.I had already lived my life and was just a ghost hovering in the tepid air of Saturday evening. Why try to renew ties which had been broken and look for paths that had been blocked off long ago? And the plump, moustachioed little man, walking beside me, hardly seemed real.