“ And there, until 1884, it was possible to gaze on the remains of a generally neglected monument, so-called Dagobert’s Tower, which included a ninth-century staircase set into the masonry, of which the… Jacques Yonnet
“ 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. Jacques Yonnet
“ 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 energy since my old g… Jacques Yonnet
“ Fortunately the City is vigilant. It too has its secret weapons. Since the summer it has released safety valves that form part of a wonderful mechanism, known only to itself. For the past three months… Jacques Yonnet
“ 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 abando… Jacques Yonnet
“ Better beware of the newly deadOf the white-handed ghostAnd the brightness of these lamps . . .wrote Luc Berimont in 1940, in Reign of Darkness.I’ve always felt the greatest reluctance to go anywhere… Jacques Yonnet
“ 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 up with an… Jacques Yonnet
“ Men are so isolated, prisoners of their own wretched selves, that they can be unbelievably sociable. Jacques Yonnet
“ An historian is a kind detective in search of the fact — remote or otherwise - that brings to a set of events apparently unconnected with each other, the link that unites them, their justification, th… Jacques Yonnet
“ The ‘Oberge des Mailletz’ is by far the oldest tavern of which any record can found in the City archives. In 1292, Adam des Mailletz, inn-keeper, paid a tithe of 18 sous and 6 deniers.This we learn fr… Jacques Yonnet
“ He insisted on clearing the table, and again devoted himself to his game of patience: piecing together the map of Paris, the bits of which he’d stuffed into the pocket of his raincoat, folded up any o… Jacques Yonnet
“ 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… Jacques Yonnet
“ 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 P… Jacques Yonnet
“ 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 onl… Jacques Yonnet
“ Every day the words that Keep-on-Dancin’ and the Gypsy imparted to me - theories, observations, advice and warnings - are substantiated and acquire deeper meaning.‘It’s not for nothing there are so ma… Jacques Yonnet
“ I should like one day, as some anonymous pedestrian revisiting the scenes of these memories, to follow on the heels of an attentive reader - here are some - and to relish his delight when, with this b… Jacques Yonnet
“ An event is never just what it is in itself and nothing more. It’s what goes on around it, at the same time, that makes it — potentially — a tragic situation.You have to have been exposed to this, at… Jacques Yonnet
“ No one will shake my conviction that those leaders of men, who are in the nature of carbuncles, of semi-conscious abscesses, who draw feverish crowds to them like noxious humours, have an innate knowl… Jacques Yonnet
