213 Quotes by Marguerite Duras

I believe that always, or almost always, in all childhoods and in all the lives that follow them, the mother represents madness. Our mothers always remain the strangest, craziest people we’ve ever met.

I suddenly remember something I’ve been told about fear. That amid a hail of machine gun fire you notice the existence of your skin.

Some people are like that – closed – they can’t learn from anyone. Us, for example, we can’t learn anything, neither I from you nor you from me, nor from anyone, nor from anything, nor from what happens.

A house means a family house, a place specially meant for putting children and men in so as to restrict their waywardness and distract them from the longing for adventure and escape they’ve had since time began.

Fidelity, enforced and unto death, is the price you pay for the kind of love you never want to give up, for someone you want to hold forever, tighter and tighter, whether he’s close or far away, someone who becomes dearer to you the more you’ve sacrificed for his sake.

I’ve forgotten the words with which to tell you. I knew them once, but I’ve forgotten them, and now I’m talking to you without them.

I acquired that drinker’s face before I drank. Drink only confirmed it. The space for it existed in me.

Drinking isn’t necessarily the same as wanting to die. But you can’t drink without thinking you’re killing yourself.

There are many women who write as they think they should write – to imitate men and make a place for themselves in literature.