Life & Mortality Quote by Georges Simenon

A hardheaded sensualism sits under Simenon’s shrug of a paradox: he “adores” life, yet refuses to grant death the dramatic power of fear. The line works because it rejects the two poses culture tends to offer writers of a certain stature: the romantic courting of death, or the pious affirmation that mortality makes life meaningful. Simenon doesn’t spiritualize the subject; he prices it. Death isn’t a moral instructor, it’s a deadline he’d rather extend.

The wit is in the final clause, which punctures any whiff of stoic heroism. “I don’t fear death” could be read as brave, even noble, until “I just prefer…” brings the whole thing back to appetite and practicality. It’s the voice of someone who has observed human behavior long enough to distrust grand declarations, including his own. Simenon’s best work, from Maigret to the romans durs, is built on that same refusal of melodrama: people aren’t saints or monsters, they’re bundles of desire, fatigue, habit, and quiet compromise. This quote is a miniature of that worldview.

Context matters. Simenon lived through two world wars, public scandal, and a career that turned prolific output into a kind of engine. For someone who wrote with such velocity, “late as possible” isn’t merely longevity; it’s more pages, more scenes, more ordinary lives to anatomize. The subtext is less about denying death than denying death the privilege of being interesting. Life, in Simenon’s universe, already has enough plot.