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A Woman's Work, From The Time She Gets Up To The Time She Goes To Bed, Is As Hard As A Day At War, Worse Than A Man's Working Day. ... To Men, Women's Work Was Like The Rain-bringing Clouds, Or The Rain Itself. The Task Involved Was Carried Out Every Day As Regularly As Sleep. So Men Were Happy - Men In The Middle Ages, Men At The Time Of The Revolution, And Men In 1986: Everything In The Garden Was Lovely.

-Marguerite Duras

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A Woman's Work, From

Marguerite Duras

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A Woman's Work, From The Time She Gets Up To The Time She Goes To Bed, Is As Hard As A Day At War, Worse Than A Man's Working Day. ... To Men, Women's Work Was Like The Rain-bringing Clouds, Or The Rain Itself. The Task Involved Was Carried Out Every Day As Regularly As Sleep. So Men Were Happy - Men In The Middle Ages, Men At The Time Of The Revolution, And Men In 1986: Everything In The Garden Was Lovely.

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The Solitude Of Writing Is A Solitude Without Which Writing Could Not Be Produced, Or Would Crumble, Drained Bloodless By The Search For Something Else To Write.

It's Only Women Who Are Not Really Quite Women At All, Frivolous Women Who Have No Idea, Who Neglect Repairs.

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.

When You Wept It Was Just Over Yourself And Not Because Of The Marvelous Impossibility Of Reaching Her Through The Difference That Separates You.

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.

A Book Consists Of Two Layers: On Top, The Readable Layer ... And Underneath, A Layer That Was Inaccessible. You Only Sense Its Existence In A Moment Of Distraction From The Literal Reading, The Way You See Childhood Through A Child. It Would Take Forever To Tell What You See, And It Would Be Pointless.

Even So You Have Managed To Live That Love In The Only Way Possible For You. Losing It Before It Happened.

It Was The Men I Deceived The Most That I Loved The Most.

He Says He’s Lonely, Horribly Lonely Because Of This Love He Feels For Her. She Says She’s Lonely Too. She Doesn’t Say Why.

I Meet You. I Remember You. Who Are You? You’re Destroying Me. You’re Good For Me. How Could I Know This City Was Tailor-made For Love? How Could I Know You Fit My Body Like A Glove? I Like You. How Unlikely. I Like You. How Slow All Of A Sudden. How Sweet. You Cannot Know. You’re Destroying Me. You’re Good For Me. You’re Destroying Me. You’re Good For Me. I Have Time. Please, Devour Me. Deform Me To The Point Of Ugliness. Why Not You? Why Not You In This City And In This Night, So Like Other Cities And Other Nights You Can Hardly Tell The Difference? I Beg Of You.

The Outrage Was On The Scale Of God. My Younger Brother Was Immortal And They Hadn't Noticed. Immortality Had Been Concealed In My Brother's Body While He Was Alive, And We Hadn't Noticed That It Dwelt There. Now My Brother's Body Was Dead, And Immortality With It. ... And The Error, The Outrage, Filled The Whole Universe.

Men Like Women Who Write. Even Though They Don't Say So. A Writer Is A Foreign Country.

I Acquired That Drinker's Face Before I Drank. Drink Only Confirmed It. The Space For It Existed In Me.

When The Past Is Recaptured By The Imagination, Breath Is Put Back Into Life.

Drinking Isn't Necessarily The Same As Wanting To Die. But You Can't Drink Without Thinking You're Killing Yourself.

No Other Human Being, No Woman, No Poem Or Music, Book Or Painting Can Replace Alcohol In Its Power To Give Man The Illusion Of Real Creation.

Alcohol Doesn't Console, It Doesn't Fill Up Anyone's Psychological Gaps, All It Replaces Is The Lack Of God. It Doesn't Comfort Man. On The Contrary, It Encourages Him In His Folly, It Transports Him To The Supreme Regions Where He Is Master Of His Own Destiny.

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Oh, How Good It Is To Be With Someone, Sometimes.

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.

I Know It's Not Clothes That Make Women Beautiful Or Otherwise, Nor Beauty Care, Nor Expensive Creams, Nor The Distinction Of Costliness Of Their Finery. I Know The Problem Lies Elsewhere. I Don't Know Where. I Only Know It Isn't Where Women Think.

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Foreign Countries

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.

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To Love One Child And To Love All Children, Whether Living Or Dead -somewhere These Two Loves Come Together. To Love A No-good But Humble Punk And To Love An Honest Man Who Believes Himself To Be An Honest Man -somewhere These, Too, Come Together.

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One Must Talk. That's How It Is. One Must.

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Heterosexuality Is

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We, Her Children, Are Heroic, Dersperate.

Suddenly, All At Once, She Knows, Knows That He Doesn't Understand Her, That He Never Will, That He Lacks The Power To Understand Such Perverseness. And That He Can Never Move Fast Enough To Catch Her.

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It’s Not That You Have To Achieve Anything, It’s That You Have To Get Away From Where You Are.

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Stormy Skies, Says Ernesto. He Grieved For Them. Summer Rain. Childhood.

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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.

It Has Been My Face. It's Got Older Still, Or Course, But Less, Comparatively, Than It Would Otherwise Have Done. It's Scored With Deep, Dry Wrinkles, The Skin Is Cracked. But My Face Hasn't Collapsed, As Some With Fine Feature Have Done. It's Kept The Same Contours, But Its Substance Has Been Laid Waste. I Have A Face Laid Waste.

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It's Afterwards You Realize That The Feeling Of Happiness You Had With A Man Didn't Necessarily Prove That You Loved Him.

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In Love There Are No Vacations. No Such Thing. Love Has To Be Lived Fully With Its Boredom And All That.

There Are Many Women Who Write As They Think They Should Write - To Imitate Men And Make A Place For Themselves In Literature.

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