I seldom read on beaches or in gardens. You can't read by two lights at once, the light of day and the light of the book. You should read by electric light, the room in shadow, and only the page lit up. Marguerite Duras More Quotes by Marguerite Duras More Quotes From Marguerite Duras When a woman drinks it's as if an animal were drinking, or a child. Alcoholism is scandalous in a woman, and a female alcoholic is rare, a serious matter. It's a slur on the divine in our nature. Marguerite Duras drinking animal children Drinking isn't necessarily the same as wanting to die. But you can't drink without thinking you're killing yourself. Marguerite Duras killing drinking thinking Life is only lived full-time by women with children. Marguerite Duras life-is children 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. Marguerite Duras paris cities years Alcohol is barren. The words a man speaks in the night of drunkenness fade like the darkness itself at the coming of day. Marguerite Duras alcohol men night Even so you have managed to live that love in the only way possible for you. Losing it before it happened. Marguerite Duras happened losing way 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. Marguerite Duras wrinkles substance skins Fidelity, enforced and unto death, is the price you pay for the kind of love you never want to give up, for someone you want to hold forever, tighter and tighter, whether he's close or far away, someone who becomes dearer to you the more you've sacrificed for his sake. Marguerite Duras giving-up forever love-you Alcohol doesn't console, it doesn't fill up anyone's psychological gaps, all it replaces is the lack of God. Marguerite Duras gaps psychological alcohol Heterosexuality is dangerous. It tempts you to aim at a perfect duality of desire. Marguerite Duras heterosexuality-is perfect desire Nowhere is one more alone than in Paris ... and yet surrounded by crowds. Nowhere is one more likely to incur greater ridicule. And no visit is more essential. Marguerite Duras crowds paris essentials 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. Marguerite Duras fascination relationship men I don't have general views about anything, except social injustice. Marguerite Duras injustice social views 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. Marguerite Duras eye men hands When you wept it was just over yourself and not because of the marvelous impossibility of reaching her through the difference that separates you. Marguerite Duras marvelous reaching differences 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. Marguerite Duras home men children ...as long as nothing happens between them, the memory is cursed with what hasn't happened. Marguerite Duras lust memories long 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. Marguerite Duras writing book ideas One must talk. That's how it is. One must. Marguerite Duras women conversation Their voices reach out into the empty yard, plunge deep into the hills, go right through the heart. Marguerite Duras yards voice heart