Quotes from Marguerite Duras

emotions of that order, very subtle, very profound, very carnal, and essential, and completely unpredictable, can hatch entire lives in a body. that's what writing is. it's the pace of the written word passing through your body.

De nacht. Schrijven is de nacht.

La historia de mi vida no existe. Eso no existe. Nunca hay centro. Ni camino, ni línea. Hay bastos pasajes donde se insinúa que alguien hubo, no es cierto, no hubo nadie.

Muito cedo foi tarde demais em minha vida.

Nunca escrevi, e pensei que escrevia, nunca amei, e pensei que amava, nunca fiz nada a não ser esperar diante da porta fechada.

Olhem as areias mortas dos desertos, o corpo morto das crianças: a imortalidade não passa por ali, ela para e contorna.

No se trata de que sea necesario conseguir algo, sino de que es necesario salirse de donde se está

she was always concerned with the practical details of life, she didn't go beyond that, always a good friend, very loyal and affectionate.

For several weeks she has sometimes wished she had a bed, or something akin to a bed, right there where she was, a bed on which to lay this heavy, leaden body, this body so difficult to move, this thankless and tender maturity, just on the verge of falling down upon an unresponsive, all-devouring earth. Ah, what is this body with which she suddenly feels herself saddled? Whatever became of the indefatigable, birdlike body that had been hers up till now?

And I have nothing like that. My mother says, This one will never be satisfied with anything. I think I'm beginning to see my life.

She, Betty Fernandez, spoke only of people, those she'd seen in the street or those she knew, about how they were, the things still left for sale in the shops, extra rations of milk and fish, good ways of dealing with shortages, with cold and constant hunger, she was always concerned with the practical details of life, she didn't go beyond that, always a good friend, very loyal and affectionate.

She, who does not see herself, is thus seen, in others. Therein lies the omnipotence of this substance whereof she is made, without any particular ties.

Y seguiré ahí, lamentándome de todo lo que haga, de todo lo que deje, de todo lo que tome, tanto lo bueno como lo malo.

Kisses on the body bring tears. Almost like a consolation. At home I don't cry. But that day in that room, tears console both for the past and for the future. I tell him one day I'll leave my mother, one day even for my mother I'll have no love left. I weep. He lays his head on me and weeps to see me weep.

And what if the Vice-Consul of Lahore were no more than one man among the many looking for a woman with whom he hoped to find oblivion?

There is nothing people cannot get accustomed to, even to a life like mine, and so I must be careful, very careful indeed, not to become accustomed to it myself.

Talking is no effort, and silence no embarrassment.

The death of a fly is still death. It's death marching toward a certain end of the world, which widens the field of the final sleep. When you see a dog die, or a horse die, you say something, like poor thing … But when a fly dies, nothing is said, no one records it, nothing.

Her mother won't stop her when she tries to make money. The child will say, I asked him for five hundred piastres so that we can go back to France. Her mother will say, Good, that's what we'll need to set ourselves up in Paris, we'll be able to manage, she'll say, with five hundred piastres. The child knows what she's doing is what the mother would have chosen for her to do, if she'd dared, if she'd had the strength, if the pain of her thoughts hadn't been there every day, wearing her out.

She seems to be in a state of what can only be described as unbearable well-being.

Her eyes are closed, but she is very far from being asleep. Even the shape of her face is altered, different. Her features are shrunken, aged. She has suddenly become what she, as she is, would be if she were ugly.

Other ties bind them in a grip which is not one of sentiment or of happiness, it is something else which bestows neither joy nor sorrow.

In the case of my younger brother it was an immortality without flaw, without commentary, smooth, pure, unique. My younger brother had nothing to cry in the wilderness, he had nothing to say, here or anywhere, nothing. He was uneducated, he never managed to learn anything. He couldn't speak, could scarcely read, scarcely write, sometimes you'd think he couldn't even suffer. He was someone who didn't understand and was afraid.

Comme quoi une idée est toujours une bonne idée, du moment qu'elle fait faire quelque chose, même si tout est entrepris de travers.