Silence, like madness, is only comparative.

I’d very much like to ‘conclude’ something from this experiment. Or that it should raise a question in my mind, and a commitment to get to the bottom of the matter, to investigate, to come...

In response to a tactless question he once said to me, ‘What do you expect? This lousy neighbourhood gave me the come-on. I couldn’t resist.

Sunset’s the best time to take a stroll down Mouffetard, the ancient Via Mons Cetardus. The buildings along it are only two or three stories high. Many are crowned with conical dovecotes. Nowhere in Paris...

Here, in a few words, you’ve said all you need to say. People stand by each other, but they don’t talk. It’s remarkable. I’ve investigated the extraordinary history of these walls. I think I’m the...

An age-old city is like a pond. With its colours and reflections. Its chills and murk. Its ferment, its sorcery, its hidden life.A city is like a woman, with a woman’s desires and dislikes. Her...

Old Hubert must have had a premonition of his squalid demise. In October he said to me, ‘Forty-two years I’ve had this place. I’d really like to go back home, but I ain’t got the...

It’s splendid how much at home we feel at Pignol’s. A tacit complicity at every moment prevails among the regulars here. A process of self-selection operates: starving crooks, thirsty whores, witless grasses working for low-grade...