Marguerite Duras quotes

Marguerite Duras was a French novelist, playwright, and filmmaker renowned for her innovative narrative style and emotional depth. Her works explore themes of memory, desire, and colonialism, with "The Lover" being one of her most famous novels. She left a profound mark on 20th-century French literature and cinema. Here are 50 of her quotes:

The best way to fill time is to waste it. (Marguerite Duras)
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. View quote
Marguerite Duras
It's afterwards you realize that the feeling of happiness you had with a man didn't necessarily prove that you loved him. View quote
Marguerite Duras
Very early in my life it was too late. View quote
Marguerite Duras
It was the men I deceived the most that I loved the most. View quote
Marguerite Duras
I see journalists as the manual workers, the laborers of the word. Journalism can only be literature when it is passionate. View quote
Marguerite Duras
Men like women who write, even though they don't say so. A writer is a foreign country. View quote
Marguerite Duras
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. View quote
Marguerite Duras
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. View quote
Marguerite Duras
You have to be very fond of men. Very, very fond. You have to be very fond of them to love them. Otherwise they're simply unbearable. View quote
Marguerite Duras
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. (Marguerite Duras)
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? View quote
Marguerite Duras
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. View quote
Marguerite Duras
Our mothers always remain the strangest, craziest people we've ever met. View quote
Marguerite Duras
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. View quote
Marguerite Duras
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. View quote
Marguerite Duras
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. View quote
Marguerite Duras
It's not that you have to achieve anything, it's that you have to get away from where you are. View quote
Marguerite Duras
When the past is recaptured by the imagination, breath is put back into life. View quote
Marguerite Duras
That she had so completely recovered her sanity was a source of sadness to her. One should never be cured of one's passion. View quote
Marguerite Duras
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. (Marguerite Duras)
The words emerge from her body without her realizing it, as if she were being visited by the memory of a language long forsaken. View quote
Marguerite Duras
Banality is sometimes striking. View quote
Marguerite Duras
Heterosexuality is dangerous. It tempts you to aim at a perfect duality of desire. View quote
Marguerite Duras
Life is only lived full-time by women with children. View quote
Marguerite Duras

Marguerite Duras

Marguerite Duras - Image
Occupation: French Writer
Born: April 4, 1914
Died: March 3, 1996
Quotes count: 50
Wikipedia: Marguerite Duras

Related authors

Marguerite Yourcenar - thumbnail
Marguerite Yourcenar  43 
French Novelist
Alain Resnais - thumbnail
Alain Resnais  7 
French Director
Nathalie Sarraute  16 
Russian Lawyer
Alain Robbe-Grillet - thumbnail
Alain Robbe-Grillet  3 
Writer
Jean-Jacques Annaud - thumbnail
Jean-Jacques Annaud  19 
French Director
Gustave Flaubert - thumbnail
Gustave Flaubert  168 
French Novelist
Françoise Sagan - thumbnail
Françoise Sagan  56 
French Playwright
Jeanne Moreau - thumbnail
Jeanne Moreau  65 
French Actress
Albert Camus - thumbnail
Albert Camus  488 
French Philosopher
Maurice Blanchot  3 
French Writer