Marie Vieux-Chauvet Quotes

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)

He is alone like me. Alone with his memories and the heavy past he drags after him like a ball and chain. (p73)

At dawn, I was already flat against the wall, drinking up the least signs of life from the town like a starving man. Nothing stirred. All around, immutable nature seemed to mock our anguish.

"...But what can you do time has rubbed away the full name as it rubs everything else. All you can do is adapt to the new and minimize the damage..." (p83)

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)

The stars multiply, separate, and scatter. Everything comes to an end and then starts again. (p67)

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)

The repressed have this in common: they exaggerate the importance of what they deny themselves. The priests conceal their desire under a skirt, the nuns under a veil, and yet they are both obsessed by it. (p27)

You may be all bluster strutting about like a walking arsenal, but I'm smart enough to hide my game and look harmless to you. And therein lies my strength. I am patient, whereas you, like all fools, are impulsive. I wrap myself in the dignity of an old family line, as I nurse my serpent's venom. You spread your cruelty, I know how to hide mine. You bite, I sting-stealthily, my eye trained by a bourgeois education, imbibed like mother's milk, which makes me the most cunning of enemies. I wait for my moment. Because for now, love saves me from hatred. (p53)

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

What a hymn to life, this work born from suffering! (p31)

Hidden behind their blinds, the ones who dared not show themselves tried not to miss any of the spectacle. I saw their glowing eyes, heard their cruel muffled laughter, comments, judgments, against which my father could scarcely defend himself. My fear of him died that day. I had seen him blush before my eyes (p102)

My cozy bourgeois upbringing is like a tattoo on my skin. (p18)

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

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