Top 11 Marguerite Duras Quotes

from Les petits chevaux de Tarquinia (16 octobre 1953)

There is no vacation from love, it doesn't exist. Love, you must live it fully, with its boredom and all, there is no possible vacation from that.

Writing is not speaking. It's silencing yourself. It's screaming without noise.

Acting doesn't bring anything to a text. On the contrary, it detracts from it.

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.

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.

The best way to fill time is to waste it.

Ce qui remplit le temps c'est vraiment de le perdre.

I see journalists as the manual workers, the laborers of the word. Journalism can only be literature when it is passionate.

It was the men I deceived the most that I loved the most.

It's afterwards you realize that the feeling of happiness you had with a man didn't necessarily prove that you loved him.