Laurent Gounelle

Life is a risk.
If you have not risked, you have not lived.
It’s what gives … that champagne taste.

Sœur Emmanuelle

I was less traumatized by his violence than by the perverse pleasure I read on my mother’s face.

Only losers have no ambition, she said.

“Where there’s a will, there’s a way,” she would repeat nonstop.

The human values on display were only a façade. The daily reality was tough, cold, competitive.

I was far from suspecting that this happiness foreshadowed the fall from which I would not get up.

Happiness makes you selfish.

“There are no big problems. There are only little people.”

“Why would I place my life in the hands of a stranger in exchange for a hypothetical happiness?”

Someone was interested in me, and whatever his intentions, that was perhaps enough to soothe my suffering.