Quotes from Marguerite Duras

Heterosexuality is dangerous. It tempts you to aim at a perfect duality of desire.

The house a woman creates is a Utopia. She can't help it - can't help trying to interest her nearest and dearest not in happiness itself but in the search for it.

The best way to fill time is to waste it.

It was the men I deceived the most that I loved the most.

It's afterwards you realize that the feeling of happiness you had with a man didn't necessarily prove that you loved him.

Men like women who write. Even though they don't say so. A writer is a foreign country.

It's only women who are not really quite women at all, frivolous women who have no idea, who neglect repairs.

Journalism without a moral position is impossible. Every journalist is a moralist. It's absolutely unavoidable.

When a woman drinks it's as if an animal were drinking, or a child. Alcoholism is scandalous in a woman, and a female alcoholic is rare, a serious matter. It's a slur on the divine in our nature.

L'hôpital existe à Hiroshima. Comment aurais-je pu éviter de le voir?

In a certain state of mind, all trace of feeling is banished. Whenever I remain silent in a certain way, I don't love you, have you noticed that?

Très vite dans ma vie il a été trop tard.

What she said was always strange. It had happened long ago. It seemed insignificant. And yet it was something you remembered forever. The words as well as the story. The voice as much as the words.

Men like women who write, even though they don't say so. A writer is a foreign country.

The story of my life doesn't exist. Does not exist. There's never any center to it. No path, no line. There are great spaces where you pretend there used to be someone, but it's not true, there was no one.

The thing that's between us is fascination, and the fascination resides in our being alike. Whether you're a man or a woman, the fascination resides in finding out that we're alike.

It was the men I deceived the most I loved the most.

He wanted to pay her; he thought women ought to be paid for keeping men from dying or going out of their minds.

And then, one day, my love, you come out of eternity.

Banality is sometimes striking.

You didn't have to attract desire. Either it was in the woman who aroused it or it didn't exist. Either it was there at first glance or else it had never been.

You give me a great desire to love.

Soon you give up, don't look for her anymore, either in the town or at night or in the daytime. Even so you have managed to live that love in the only way possible for you. Losing it before it happened.

Because he doesn't know he carries within him a supreme elegance, I say it for him.