Quotes from Marguerite Duras

Ma... dirlo così... come potrei. Come si può valutare una cosa simile... il disonore? Non dobbiamo valutare una cosa simile, signora. Deve dirmi che somma le piacerebbe avere.

Through you I go back to the origin of the sign, to the free writing sketched by wind on the sea and the sand, to the wild writing of the birds. — Marguerite Duras, C'est Tout / No More , transl. Richard Howard (Seven Stories Press, 1998) (via mothwood)

Ng??i ta không tìm th?y ná»—i cô Ä'Æ¡n, ng??i ta t?o ra nó. Ná»—i cô Ä'Æ¡n, nó tá»± sinh ra.

I tell him I like the idea of his having many women, the idea of my being one of them, indistinguishable. We look at each other. He understands what I've just said. Our expressions are suddenly changed, false, caught in evil and death.

And the girl started up as if to go and kill herself in her turn, throw herself in her turn into the sea, and afterwards she wept because she thought of the man from Cholon and suddenly she wasn't sure she hadn't loved him with a love she hadn't seen because it had lost itself in the affair like water in sand and she rediscovered it only now, through this moment of music flung across the sea.

During this period, they say, Lol's collapse was marked by signs of suffering. But what is one to make of suffering which has no apparent cause?

L'envie d'être au bord de tuer un amant,de le garder pour vous, pour vous seul, de le prendre, de le voler contre toutes les lois, contre tous les empires de la morale, vous ne la connaissez pas, vous ne l'avez jamais connue?

And it really was unto death. It has been unto death.

Con frecuencia, al terminar el trabajo, a uno le asalta el recuerdo de la más grande de las injusticias. Hablo de lo cotidiano de la vida. No es por la mañana, es al atardecer cuando eso invade las casas, nos invade a nosotros. Y si no se es así, no se es absolutamente nada. Se es: nada. Y siempre en todos los casos de todos los pueblos, se sabe.

Es la mayor injusticia del tiempo, de todos los tiempos: y si uno no llora por eso una sola vez en su vida no llora por nada. Y no llorar nunca es no vivir.

Llorar, es necesario que eso también suceda.

Aucun couple, même le meilleur, ne peut encourager à l'amour, ce n'est pas vrai.

Ese insensato amor que le profeso sigue siendo para mí un insondable misterio. No sé por qué le quería hasta ese extremo de querir morir de su muerte. Hacía diez años que nos habíamos separado y cuando eso sucedió raramente pensaba en él, le quería, parece, para siempre y nada nuevo podía alcanzar ese amor. Yo había olvidado la muerte.

Sen bu olay? s?kça anlat?yorsundur, dedim. ... Hay?r, dedi, bunu anlatm?yorum...Her ÅŸey herkese anlat?lmaz...

I answer: Yes; they find me attractive in spite of everything. It's then she says: And also because of what you are yourself.

It's in this valour, human, absurd, that I see true grace.

And as for him, it would be enough to make her understand that this was the smile she had seen the other evening near the building site and that it hadn't been interrupted because of any willingness on his part not to allow it to appear, but that in reality it had never ceased flowing between them, an invisible spring, from the very first.

Ils devraient toujours lire le livre à voix haute et claire, se tenir de toutes leurs forces exempts de toute mémoire de l'avoir jamais lu, dans la conviction de n'en connaître rien, et cela chaque soir.

También para los recuerdos es demasiado tarde

Que no la conocerá nunca, que no tiene los medios para conocer tanta perversidad. Ni de dar tantos y tantos rodeos para atraparla, nunca lo conseguirá.

El recuerdo de los hombres nunca surge con esa deslumbrante luminosidad que acompaña al de las mujeres

Nos permitíamos el lujo de no querer comer

We said nothing about all this outside, one of the first things we'd learned was to keep quiet about the ruling principle of our life, poverty. And then about everything else. Our first confidants, though the word seems excessive, are our lovers, the people we meet away from our various homes, first in the streets of Saigon and then on ocean liners and trains, and then all over the place.

Esos ríos fluyen depreisa, se derraman como si la tierra se inclinara