Quotes by Marguerite Duras

You ask: Why is the malady of death fatal? She answers: Because whoever has it doesnt know hes a carrier, of death. And also because hes like to die without any life to die to, and without evn knowing thats what hes doing.

...as long as nothing happens between them, the memory is cursed with what hasnt happened.

When its in a book I dont think itll hurt any more ...exist any more. One of the things writing does is wipe things out. Replace them.

It has been my face. Its got older still, or course, but less, comparatively, than it would otherwise have done. Its scored with deep, dry wrinkles, the skin is cracked. But my face hasnt collapsed, as some with fine feature have done. Its kept the same contours, but its substance has been laid waste. I have a face laid waste.

I showed him the sea. Its a great luxury, being able to see it from the balcony. When cities are bombed there are always ruins and corpses left. But you can drop an atomic bomb in the sea and ten minutes later its back as it was before. You cant change the shape of water.

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.

Its while its being lived that life is immortal, while its 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. Its as untrue to say its 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.

I think about you. But I dont say it anymore.

Our mothers always remain the strangest, craziest people weve ever met.

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 recognize

The best way to fill time is to waste it.

The house a woman creates is a Utopia. She cant help it - cant help trying to interest her nearest and dearest not in happiness itself but in the search for it.

“Oh, how good it is to be with someone, sometimes.”