213 Quotes by Marguerite Duras

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

What stops you killing yourself when you’re intoxicated out of your mind is the thought that once you’re dead you won’t be able to drink any more.

I’ve never written, though I thought I wrote, never loved, though I thought I loved, never done anything but wait outside the closed door.

She opens her eyes, says: Stop lying. She says she hopes she’ll never know anything, anything in the world, the way you do. She says: I don’t want to know anything the way you do, with that death-derived certainty, that hopeless monotony, the same every day of your life, every night, and that deadly routine of lovelessness.

You have to be very fond of men. Very, very fond. You have to be very fond of them to love them. Otherwise they’re simply unbearable.

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.

I’m still there, watching those possessed children, as far away from the mystery now as I was then. I’ve never written, though I thought I wrote, never loved, though I thought I loved, never done anything but wait outside the closed door.

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.

When you’re being looked at you can’t look. To look is to feel curious, to be interested, to lower yourself. No one you look at is worth it.