Georges Perec Quotes

France, Writer
March 7, 1936 – March, 3, 1982.

Georges Perec was a French novelist, filmmaker, documentalist, and essayist. He was a member of the Oulipo group. His father died as a soldier early in the Second World War and his mother was murdered in the Holocaust, and many of his works deal with absence, loss, and identity, often through word play.

Also known as Novelist, Film Maker

This is how space begins, with words only, signs traced on the blank page. To describe space: to name it, to trace it, like those portolano-makers who saturated the coastlines with the names of harbours, the names of capes, the names of inlets, until in the end the land was only separated from the sea by a continuous ribbon of text. Is the aleph, that place in Borges from which the entire world is visible simultaneously, anything other than an alphabet?

Georges Perec
- Space
- Describe
The idea occurred to him when he was twenty. At first it was only a vague idea, a question looming — what should I do? — with an answer taking shape: nothing.

Georges Perec
- Question
- Idea
- I Do