Albert Cohen

Albert Cohen (August 16, 1895 – October 17, 1981) was a Greek-born Jewish Swiss novelist who wrote in French.

Le livre de ma mère [The Book of My Mother] (1954)

 * Alone dwells every man and everyone mocks everyone else, and a deserted island is our pain.


 * Yes, the words, the land of my birth, they console me and compensate, but they would not bring me my mother back.


 * Go away, image of my living mother, full of life, as I saw her in France for the last time. Go away! My mother's ghost.


 * In my solitude I sing to myself a sweet lullaby, as sweet as my mother used to sing to me.


 * I say to myself that her small hands are no more worm, and that I would never again carry them soft to my front.


 * Never again I would know her slow kisses which are hardly felt. Never again the ringing mourning bells, songs of the dead that we loved.


 * Human friends, friends in hardship and in life, this is our pure love, love of mother and son.


 * My true single consolation is that she is not present to see me in my agony of her death.


 * In my sleep, which is the song of the tombs, I have just seen her again, as beautiful as in her youth.


 * She answers no more, the one who used to answer always.


 * She does not talk anymore, the one who used to talk so pleasantly.


 * With her alone I could be far away from everyone.


 * Only with her I was not alone, now I am alone with everyone.


 * Brothers, my human brothers, force me to believe in eternal life.