She says people ought to learn to live like them, with the body abandoned in a wilderness, and in the mind the memory of a single kiss, a single word, a single look to stand for a whole love. Marguerite Duras More Quotes by Marguerite Duras More Quotes From Marguerite Duras 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. Marguerite Duras madness knows 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. Marguerite Duras empty shapes space It was the men I deceived the most that I loved the most. Marguerite Duras he-man love men 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? Marguerite Duras mind love-you feelings 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. Marguerite Duras lonely feels 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. Marguerite Duras funny-sarcastic destiny men 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 long-ago voice forever It's afterwards you realize that the feeling of happiness you had with a man didn't necessarily prove that you loved him. Marguerite Duras feelings love men We’re in the vanguard of a nameless battle, a battle without arms or bloodshed or glory: we’re in the vanguard of waiting. Marguerite Duras arms battle waiting I see journalists as the manual workers, the laborers of the word. Journalism can only be literature when it is passionate. Marguerite Duras journalism passionate literature Get rid of things or you'll spend your whole life tidying up. Marguerite Duras tidying-up whole-life whole 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. Marguerite Duras drained solitude writing She had lived her early years as though she were waiting for something she might, but never did, become. Marguerite Duras waiting might years To love one child and to love all children, whether living or dead -somewhere these two loves come together. To love a no-good but humble punk and to love an honest man who believes himself to be an honest man -somewhere these, too, come together. Marguerite Duras love believe children He wanted to pay her; he thought women ought to be paid for keeping men from dying or going out of their minds. Marguerite Duras dying mind men 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. Marguerite Duras affair impossible men 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. Marguerite Duras able drinking mind 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. Marguerite Duras mother believe people 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 waiting doors children When the past is recaptured by the imagination, breath is put back into life. Marguerite Duras breaths imagination past