Romain Gary, nascido Roman Kacew Vilnius, Lituânia, 8 de maio de 1914 — Paris, França, 2 de dezembro de 1980, foi um romancista, piloto da Segunda Guerra Mundial, diretor de cinema e diplomata francês.
Como escritor usou os pseudónimos Émile Ajar, Fosco Sinibaldi, Shatan Bogat, René Deville e Lucien Brûlard, e foi o único escritor a receber duas vezes o Prêmio Goncourt, em 1956 e 1975 .
Wikipedia
“There is more to Jewish history than Auschwitz.”
Interview (1970), republished in Le Judaïsme n’est pas une Question de Sang [Judaism Isn’t About Blood] (2008) by Les éditions de l’Herne, as quoted in "A Chameleon on Show" in Forward (12 January 2011) http://www.forward.com/articles/134609/
“I want to test myself, a trial by fire, so that my I is burned off.”
La Nuit Sera Calme [The Night Will Be Calm] (1974)
Contexto: Gari in Russian means "burn!"… I want to test myself, a trial by fire, so that my I is burned off.
“As long as you live, you hope. You think that everything will just… get better.”
Fonte: Au-delà de cette limite votre ticket n'est plus valable
“They thought I suffered from lack of exterior, when I suffered from excess of interior”
Fonte: Gros-Câlin
“I’ve had a lot of fun. Good-bye, and thank you.”
The Life and Death of Émile Ajar (1980), an essay written prior to his suicide, as quoted in "Romain Gary: A Short Biography" by Madeleine Schwartz, at The Harvard Advocate http://www.theharvardadvocate.com/content/romain-gary-short-biography
Contexto: The gossip that came back to me from fashionable dinners where people pitied poor Romain Gary, who must be a little sad, a little jealous of the meteoric rise in the literary firmament of his cousin Emile Ajar… I’ve had a lot of fun. Good-bye, and thank you.
“Men sometimes die much earlier than they are burried.”
Fonte: Au-delà de cette limite votre ticket n'est plus valable
“Humour is an affirmation of dignity, a declaration of man's superiority to all that befalls him.”
As quoted in The Harper Book of Quotations (1993) by Robert I. Fitzhenry, p. 223
“When a war is won, it's the losers, not the winners, who are liberated.”
Tulipe (1946)
Promise at Dawn (1960) as quoted in "Great Pretenders" by Emma Garman in Tablet (31 October 2007) http://www.tabletmag.com/arts-and-culture/books/906/great-pretenders/
Introduction to The Plague (1946) by Albert Camus, as translated in a 1962 edition.
As quoted in Hope and Memory: Lessons from the Twentieth Century (2003) by Tzvetan Todorov, p. 217
“During the war he was an airman and slaughtered civilians from on high.”
Pseudo (1976)