Marie Vieux-Chauvet Quotes

Quietly, like a shadow, I watch this drama unfold scene by scene. I am the lucid one here, the dangerous one, and nobody suspects. An old maid! No husband. Doesn't know love. Hasn't even lived, really. They're wrong. In any case, I'm savoring my revenge in silence. Silence is mine, vengeance is mine. (first lines)

The eyes, if one knows them well, rarely lie (chapter XXII, p342)

It did not escape me that for some time now I'd been faking piety. I had lost my faith when I saw the children's bodies piled high before my eyes after the last hurricane. Many of the oldest and meanest had been spared. Why? was the first unanswered question that gave me the courage to make my point. How many of these women kneeling to receive the body and blood of our Lord had never helped their fellow man? I asked myself that Sunday. All those around me were great sinners-usurers, exploiters, sadists, corrupters of virtue. I had known them from tender childhood. Not a soul you could praise to the skies. (p18)

A white public had put her on a pedestal, and from that pedestal she looked down and saw everything unmasked. And what she saw was horrific. It was a shame. (chapter XII, p175)

At twelve, she already understood many things. She accepted them as inevitable, yet questioned them all the same. Why? Why were things this way and not another? Why were some people rich and others poor? Why did people beat their slaves? Why were some masters kind and others cruel, some priests good and others evil? Why did catechism teach the things it did and why did the priests act the way they did? They said: we are all brothers, but then they bought slaves and beat or otherwise tortured them. Why should she have to hide herself in order to learn to read? Why had Rosélia, one of the neighborhood vendors, been imprisoned for hiding a runaway slave? And above all, why - knowing what could happen - had she hidden that slave, who she did not even know? (chapter I, p17)

Nothing matters except this bitterness consuming me, simmering on a low flame. It's dangerous. (p149)

Cruelty is contagious

Life continues in its monotonous and petty course. Fortunately, I carry within me a world quite different from the one I live in. (p73)

he forgets that a man, no matter where he is, takes his ideas and convictions with him. (p78)

Alone again, she had invented touchingly naïve myths to console herself: a leaf whirling in the wind, a butterfly whether black or alive with color, the hooting of an owl or the graceful song of a nightingale, everything seemed pregnant with meaning. (chapter 8)

One thing remains true: hatred only breeds hatred. (p126)

Amazing how love cancels out all other feelings. (p23)

Even though life has denied me everything, I am not inclined to play the adoptive mother. I may kiss Jane's son on his nice round cheeks but I remain detached, the door to my heart as solidly barricaded as the door to my bedroom. (p57)

Unfortunately, I was too practiced in the art of deception, and behind my mask of detachment, I burned in silence like a torch. (p12)

Fear is a vice that takes root once it is cultivated. It takes time to recover from it.
Jean Luze shrugged.
"Who can boast that he has never been afraid?" he shot back at Audier. "At least you have been spared from war. As for me, I bear its mark on my body and soul forever."