Quotes from Marguerite Duras

A prolonged silence ensues. The reason for the silence is our growing interest one for the other. No one is aware of it, no one yet; no one? am I quite sure?

You think of outside your room, of the streets of the town, the lonely little squares over by the station, of those winter Saturdays all alike.

Paradoxically, the freedom of Paris is associated with a persistent belief that nothing ever changes. Paris, they say, is the city that changes least. After an absence of twenty or thirty years, one still recognizes it. ( Tourists in Paris )

My memory of men is never lit up and illuminated like my memory of women.

Très vite dans ma vie il a été trop tard. A dix-huit ans il était déjà trop tard. Entre dix-huit ans et vingt-cinq ans mon visage est parti dans une direction imprévue. A dix-huit ans j'ai vieilli.

She lavishes pain with generosity.

We, her children, are heroic, dersperate.

Perhaps someone will have seen mine, the one I'm waiting for, just as I saw him, in a ditch when his hands were making their last appeal and his eyes no longer could see. Someone who will never know what that man was to me; someone whose name I'll never know.

Their voices reach out into the empty yard, plunge deep into the hills, go right through the heart.

Oh, I'd like to show you my gratitude, show you how ugly I am, how impossible it is to love me. I'd like to offer you that.

You tell yourself it would be best for her to die. You tell yourself that if now, at this hour of the night, she died, it would be easier. For you, you probably mean, but you don't finish the sentence.

Je sais que ce ne sont pas les vêtements qui font les femmes plus ou moins belles ni les soins de beauté, ni les prix des onguents, ni la rareté, le prix des atours. Je sais que le problème est ailleurs. Je ne sais pas où il est.

Il faudrait prévenir les gens de ces choses-là. Leur apprendre que l'immortalité est mortelle, qu'elle peut mourir, que c'est arrivé, que cela arrive encore.

Nunca he escrito, creyendo hacerlo, nunca he amado, creyendo amar, nunca he hecho nada salvo esperar delante de la puerta cerrada.

I think about you but I don't say it anymore.

One day,I was already old, a man came up to me in the street.

Writing was the only thing that populated my life and made it magic.

You ask: Why is the malady of death fatal? She answers: Because whoever has it doesn't know he's a carrier, of death. And also because he's like to die without any life to die to, and without even knowing that's what he's doing.

she can remember everyone admiring a rare kind of evening they spoke of as something they ought to save from oblivion to describe to their children later. And that for her part she would have had it hidden, had that late summer evening buried and burned to ashes.

Ellos ríen. Verse reír los vuelve locos de alegría. Ella le pide que la avise cuando un día se lance a amarla y a saberlo, si alguna vez sucede. Después de haber reído, lloran juntos como cada día. Cuando ella se va el sol se precipita, estalla en la habitación. Cuando ella cierra la puerta, la habitación cae en la oscuridad, y el entra ya en la espera de la noche

Nunca hay centro. Ni camino, ni línea. Hay vastos pasajes donde se insinúa que alguien hubo. No es cierto, no hubo nadie.

Avant et maintenant c'est l'amour entre toi et moi. Ce sera ce que tu voudrais, toi, que tu sois.

Yes, she can remember everyone admiring a rare kind of evening they spoke of as something the ought to save from oblivion to describe to their children later. And that for her part she would have had it hidden, had that late summer evening buried and burned to ashes.

Je me souviens mal des jours. L'éclairement solaire ternissait les couleurs, écrasait. Des nuits, je me souviens.Le bleu était plus loin que le ciel, il était derrière toutes les épaisseurs, il recouvrait le fond du monde. Le ciel, pour moi, c'était cette traînée de pure brillance qui traverse le bleu, cette fusion froide au-delà de toute couleur.