Quotes from Annie Ernaux

Maybe the true purpose of my life is for my body, my sensations and my thoughts to become writing, in other words, something intelligible and universal, causing my existence to merge into the lives and heads of other people.

She teaches me that the world is made to be pounced on and enjoyed, and that there is absolutely no reason at all to hold back.

To exist is to drink oneself without thirst.

I started to make a literary being of myself, someone who lives as if her experiences were to be written down someday.

Where are the eyes of my childhood, those fearful eyes she had thirty years ago, the eyes that made me?

Pain cannot be kept intact, it needs to be "processed," converted into humor.

I realize that I have left part of myself in a place where I shall probably never come back.

I have searched for my mother's love in all the corners of the world.

To grow old is to fade, to become transparent.

J'ai glissé dans cette moitié du monde pour laquelle l'autre n'est qu'un décor.

From the very beginning, and throughout the whole of our affair, I had the privilege of knowing what we all find out in the end: the man we love is a complete stranger.

She feels as if a book is writing itself just behind her; all she has to do is live. But there is nothing.

I do not wish to explain my passion—that would imply that it was a mistake or some disorder I need to justify—I just want to describe it.

When I was a child, luxury was fur coats, evening dresses, and villas by the sea. Later on, I thought it meant leading the life of an intellectual. Now I feel that it is also being able to live out a passion for a man or a woman.

All the hardships I have endured were merely rehearsals to prepare me for this devastating pain.

She has no name for that feeling of utter abandonment, nor the feeling that comes over her on fair days, when she stands in the courtyard from the photo, and the voice of the loudspeaker booms front behind the trees, and the music and commercials run together in an unintelligible blur. It is as if she were standing outside the fete, separated from some earlier thing.

D'avoir reçu les clés pour comprendre la honte ne donne pas le pouvoir de l'effacer.

Quand j'étais enfant, le luxe c'était pour moi les manteaux de fourrure et les villas au bord de la mer. Plus tard, j'ai cru que c'était de mener une vie d'intellectuel. Il me semble maintenant que c'est aussi de pouvoir vivre une passion pour un homme ou une femme

I experienced pleasure like a future pain.

J'ai tué ma mère en moi à ce moment-là.

A partir du mois de septembre l'année dernière, je n'ai plus rien fait d'autre qu'attendre un homme : qu'il me téléphone et qu'il vienne chez moi.

I shall try to conjure up each of the sentences engraved in my memory which were either so unbearable or so comforting to me at the time that the mere thought of them today engulfs me in a wave of horror or sweetness.

Sauver quelque chose du temps où l'on ne sera plus jamais.

Chaque jour et partout dans le monde il y a des hommes en cercle autour d'une femme, prêts à lui jeter la pierre.