Marguerite Duras

It’s not that you have to achieve anything, it’s that you have to get away from where you are.

The only thing left is this girl, she’s growing up, perhaps one day she’ll find out how to bring in some money. That’s why, though she doesn’t know it, that’s why the mother lets the girl go out dressed like a child prostitute. And that’s why the child already knows how to divert the interest people take in her to the interest she takes in money. That makes her mother smile.

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.

I’ll always have regrets for everything I do, everything I’ve gained, everything I’ve lost, good and bad

It’s dark in the studio, but she doesn’t ask him to open the shutters. She doesn’t feel anything in particular, no hate, no repugnance either, so probably it’s already desire.

He moans, weeps. In dreadful love.

There’s nothing solid separating us from other people. They don’t know of our existence. We glimpse something of theirs, the sum of their voices, of their movements, like the intermittent hoot of a siren, mournful, dim.

Talks to me, says he knew right away, when we were crossing the river, that I’d be like this after my first lover, that I’d love love, he says he knows now I’ll deceive him and deceive all the men I’m ever with.

He’s used to it, this is his occupation in life, love, nothing else.

The sea, the immensity, gathering, receding, returning.