213 Quotes by Marguerite Duras

I seldom read on beaches or in gardens. You can’t read by two lights at once, the light of day and the light of the book. You should read by electric light, the room in shadow, and only the page lit up.

The woman is the home. That’s where she used to be, and that’s where she still is. You might ask me, What if a man tries to be part of the home – will the woman let him? I answer yes. Because the he becomes one of the children.

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.

I often think of the image only I can see now, and of which I’ve never spoken. It’s always there, in the same silence, amazing. It’s the only image of myself I like, the only one in which I recognize myself, in which I delight.

In a thousand years time this day will have existed for a thousand years to the day. And the ignorance of the whole world about what they’ve said today will have a date too.

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.

Journalism without a moral position is impossible. Every journalist is a moralist. It’s absolutely unavoidable.

It’s while it’s being lived that life is immortal, while it’s still alive. Immortality is not a matter of more or less time, its not really a question of immortality but of something else that remains unknown. It’s as untrue to say it’s without beginning or end as to say it begins and ends with the life of the spirit, since it partakes both of the spirit and of the pursuit of the void.

The story of my life doesn’t exist. Does not exist. There’s never any center to it. No path, no line. There are great spaces where you pretend there used to be someone, but it’s not true, there was no one.