...as long as nothing happens between them, the memory is cursed with what hasn't happened.

— Marguerite Duras

Don’t be afraid anymore. Not of anyone. Not of anything. Nothing. Ever again. Listen to me: not ever again.

— Marguerite Duras

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

I feel a sadness I expected and which comes only from myself. I say I’ve always been sad. That I can see the same sadness in photos of myself when I was small. That today, recognizing it as the sadness I’ve always had, I could almost call it by my own name, it’s so like me.

— Marguerite Duras

I know it's not clothes that make women beautiful or otherwise, nor beauty care, nor expensive creams, nor the distinction of costliness of their finery. I know the problem lies elsewhere. Furthermore, I don't know where. Furthermore, I only know it isn't where women think.

— Marguerite Duras

I often think of the image only I can see now, and of which I’ve never spoken. It’s always there, in the same silence, amazing. It’s the only image of myself I like, the only one in which I recognize myself, in which I delight

— Marguerite Duras

I showed him the sea. It's a great luxury, being able to see it from the balcony. When cities are bombed there are always ruins and corpses left. But you can drop an atomic bomb in the sea and ten minutes later it's back as it was before. You can't change the shape of water.

— Marguerite Duras

It has been my face. It's got older still, or course, but less, comparatively, than it would otherwise have done. Furthermore, it's scored with deep, dry wrinkles, the skin is cracked. But my face hasn't collapsed, as some with fine feature have done. It's kept the same contours, but its substance has been laid waste. I have a face laid waste.

— Marguerite Duras

I think about you. But I don't say it anymore.

— Marguerite Duras

It's while it's being lived that life is immortal, while it's still alive. Immortality is not a matter of more or less time, It's not really a question of immortality but of something else that remains unknown. It's as untrue to say it's without beginning or end as to say it begins and ends with the life of the spirit, since it partakes both of the spirit and of the pursuit of the void.

— Marguerite Duras