“It took me a long time to realize that there are two kinds of writing: the one you write and the one that writes you. The one that writes you is dangerous. You go where you don’t want to go. You look where you don’t want to look.”
Tag: quotes
On Writing – Marguerite Duras
“To be alone with the as yet unwritten book is still to be in the primal sleep of humanity. . . being alone with the writing that is still lying fallow. It means trying not to die.
When close friends came to see me, that, too, was horrible. My friends knew nothing about me: they meant well and they came out of kindness, believing they would do me good. Strangest of all is that I thought nothing of it. This is what makes writing wild. One returns to a savage state from before life itself. And one can always recognize it: it’s the savageness of forests, as ancient as time. It is the fear of everything, distinct and inseparable from life itself. One becomes relentless. One cannot write without bodily strength. One must be stronger than oneself to approach writing; one must be strong than what one is writing.
It’s an odd thing – not only writing, the written word, but also the howls of animals in the night, of everyone, of you and me, of dogs. It’s the massive, appalling vulgarity of society. Pain is also Christ and Moses and the Pharaohs and all the Jews and all the Jewish children, and it’s also the most violent form of happiness. I still believe that.“
Margot Sannes 