Marguerite Duras

Marguerite Donnadieu (April 4 1914 – March 3 1996), better known as Marguerite Duras, was a French writer and film director.

Marguerite Duras (1993)

Quotes

• It's afterwards you realize that the feeling of happiness you had with a man didn't necessarily prove that you loved him.
  • The Chimneys of India Song, from Practicalities (1987, trans. 1990).

• It was the men I deceived the most that I loved the most.
  • The Chimneys of India Song, from Practicalities (1987, trans. 1990).

• I see journalists as the manual workers, the laborers of the word. Journalism can only be literature when it is passionate.
  • Walesa's Wife, from Practicalities (1987, trans. 1990).

• Ce qui remplit le temps c'est vraiment de le perdre.
  • The best way to fill time is to waste it.
  • Wasting Time, from Practicalities (1987, trans. 1990).

• Paradoxically, the freedom of Paris is associated with a persistent belief that nothing ever changes. Paris, they say, is the city that changes least. After an absence of twenty or thirty years, one still recognizes it.
  • Tourists in Paris, from Outside: Selected Writings (1984).

• 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.
  • Alcohol, from Practicalities (1987, trans. 1990).

• Acting doesn't bring anything to a text. On the contrary, it detracts from it.
  • International Herald Tribune (28 March 1990).

• Writing is not speaking. It's silencing yourself. It's screaming without noise.
  • from Ecrire (1993)

• There is no vacation from love, it doesn't exist. Love, you must live it fully, with its boredom and all, there is no possible vacation from that.
  • from Les petits chevaux de Tarquinia (16 octobre 1953)

Quotes about Marguerite Duras

• (What moves you most in a work of literature?) I’m not yet the writer I aspire to be, but at my age, great books written by women over 60 give me hope. Diana Athill, Colette, Harriett Doerr, Marguerite Duras, Grace Paley, Elena Poniatowska, Jean Rhys, Mercé Rodoreda, to name but a few.
  • Sandra Cisneros interview (2021)