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What She Said Was Always Strange. It Had Happened Long Ago. It Seemed Insignificant. And Yet It Was Something You Remembered Forever. The Words As Well As The Story. The Voice As Much As The Words.

-Marguerite Duras

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What She Said Was

Marguerite Duras

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What She Said Was Always Strange. It Had Happened Long Ago. It Seemed Insignificant. And Yet It Was Something You Remembered Forever. The Words As Well As The Story. The Voice As Much As The Words.

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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.

You Alone Became The Outer Surface Of My Life, The Side I Never See, And You Will Be That, The Unknown Part Of Me, Until I Die.

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.

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.

We’re In The Vanguard Of A Nameless Battle, A Battle Without Arms Or Bloodshed Or Glory: We’re In The Vanguard Of Waiting.

What She Said Was Always Strange. It Had Happened Long Ago. It Seemed Insignificant. And Yet It Was Something You Remembered Forever. The Words As Well As The Story. The Voice As Much As The Words.

Perhaps Someone Will Have Seen Mine, The One I’m Waiting For, Just As I Saw Him, In A Ditch When His Hands Were Making Their Last Appeal And His Eyes No Longer Could See. Someone Who Will Never Know What That Man Was To Me; Someone Whose Name I’ll Never Know.

Words Don't Change Their Shape, They Change Their Meaning, Their Function...they Don't Have A Meaning Of Their Own Any More, They Refer To Other Words That You Don't Know, That You've Never Read Or Heard...you've Never Seen Their Shape, But You Feel...you Suspect...they Correspond To...an Empty Space Inside You...or In The Universe.

In A Certain State Of Mind, All Trace Of Feeling Is Banished. Whenever I Remain Silent In A Certain Way, I Don't Love You, Have You Noticed That?

...as Long As Nothing Happens Between Them, The Memory Is Cursed With What Hasn't Happened.

I Know All One Can Know When One Knows Nothing.

When It's In A Book I Don't Think It'll Hurt Any More ...exist Any More. One Of The Things Writing Does Is Wipe Things Out. Replace Them.

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.

Their Voices Reach Out Into The Empty Yard, Plunge Deep Into The Hills, Go Right Through The Heart.

Banality Is Sometimes Striking.

Heterosexuality Is Dangerous. It Tempts You To Aim At A Perfect Duality Of Desire.

Heterosexuality Is

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

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

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.

Journalism Without A Moral Position Is Impossible. Every Journalist Is A Moralist. It's Absolutely Unavoidable. A Journalist Is Someone Who Looks At The World And The Way It Works, Someone Who Takes A Close Look At Things Every Day And Reports What She Sees, Someone Who Represents The World, The Event, For Others. She Cannot Do Her Work Without Judging What She Sees.

Frigidity Is Desire Imagined By A Woman Who Doesnt Desire The Man Offering Himself To Her. Its The Desire Of A Woman For A Man Who Hasnt Yet Come To Her, Whom She Doesnt Yet Know. Shes Faithful To This Stranger Even Before She Belongs To Him. Frigidity Is The Non-desire For Whatever Is Not Him.

For That's What A Woman, A Mother Wants - To Teach Her Children To Take An Interest In Life. She Knows It's Safer For Them To Be Interested In Other People's Happiness Than To Believe In Their Own.

Alcohol Doesn't Console, It Doesn't Fill Up Anyone's Psychological Gaps, All It Replaces Is The Lack Of God.

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.

A Prolonged Silence Ensues. The Reason For The Silence Is Our Growing Interest One For The Other. No One Is Aware Of It, No One Yet; No One? Am I Quite Sure?

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.

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

I Don't Have General Views About Anything, Except Social Injustice.

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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.

She Represents The Un-vowed Aspiration Of The Male Human Being, His Potential Infidelity - And Infidelity Of A Very Special Kind, Which Would Lead Him To The Opposite Of His Wife, To The Woman Of Wax Whom He Could Model At Will, Make And Unmake In Any Way He Wished, Even Unto Death.

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.

I Have Never Waited For Anything The Way I've Waited For Today, When Nothing Will Happen.

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.

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

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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.

Finding Yourself In A Hole, At The Bottom Of A Hole, In Almost Total Solitude, And Discovering That Only Writing Can Save You. To Be Without The Slightest Subject For A Book, The Slightest Idea For A Book, Is To Find Yourself, Once Again, Before A Book. A Vast Emptiness. A Possible Book. Before Nothing. Before Something Like Living, Naked Writing, Like Something Terrible, Terrible To Overcome.

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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War Is A Generality, So Are The Inevitabilities Of War, Including Death.

We, Her Children, Are Heroic, Dersperate.

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.

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

I've Known You For Years. Everyone Says You Were Beautiful When You Were Young, But I Want To Tell You I Think You're More Beautiful Now Than Then. Rather Than Your Face As A Young Woman, I Prefer Your Face As It Is Now. Ravaged.

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.

Alcohol Is Barren. The Words A Man Speaks In The Night Of Drunkenness Fade Like The Darkness Itself At The Coming Of Day.

Madness Is Like Intelligence, You Know. You Can't Explain It. Just Like Intelligence. It Comes On You, It Fills You, And Then You Understand It. But When It Goes Away You Can't Understand It At All Any Longer.

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

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In Heterosexual Love There's No Solution. Man And Woman Are Irreconcilable, And It's The Doomed Attempt To Do The Impossible, Repeated In Each New Affair, That Lends Heterosexual Love Its Grandeur.

Journalism Without A Moral Position Is Impossible. Every Journalist Is A Moralist. It's Absolutely Unavoidable.

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All That Remains Of That Minute Is Time In All Its Purity, Bone-white Time.

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That She Had So Completely Recovered Her Sanity Was A Source Of Sadness To Her. One Should Never Be Cured Of One's Passion.

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 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.

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

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Very Early In My Life It Was Too Late.

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In Homosexual Love The Passion Is Homosexuality Itself. What A Homosexual Loves, As If It Were His Lover, His Country, His Art, His Land, Is Homosexuality.

Our Mothers Always Remain The Strangest, Craziest People We've Ever Met.

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.

The Words Emerge From Her Body Without Her Realizing It, As If She Were Being Visited By The Memory Of A Language Long Forsaken.

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.

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

The Best Way To Fill Time Is To Waste It.

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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.

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I Am Dead. I Have No Desire For You. My Body No Longer Wants The One Who Doesn’t Love.

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