Quotes from book
The Lover

Name: The Lover
Author: Marguerite Duras

Marguerite DurasOriginal title L'Amant (French, 1984)

The Lover is an autobiographical novel by Marguerite Duras, published in 1984 by Les Éditions de Minuit. It has been translated to 43 languages and was awarded the 1984 Prix Goncourt. It was adapted to film in 1992 as The Lover.

“Very early in my life it was too late.”

Marguerite Duras book The Lover

Source: The Lover

“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. I don't know where. I only know it isn't where women think.”

Marguerite Duras book The Lover

Source: The Lover

“I've known you for years. Everyone says you were beautiful when you were young, but I want to tell you I think you're more beautiful now than then. Rather than your face as a young woman, I prefer your face as it is now. Ravaged.”

Marguerite Duras book The Lover

Source: The Lover

“I am dead. I have no desire for you. My body no longer wants the one who doesn’t love.”

Marguerite Duras book The Lover

Source: The Lover

“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 book The Lover

Source: The Lover

“I'm still there, watching those possessed children, as far away from the mystery now as I was then. I've never written, though I thought I wrote, never loved, though I thought I loved, never done anything but wait outside the closed door.”

Marguerite Duras book The Lover

Source: The Lover

“It’s not that you have to achieve anything, it’s that you have to get away from where you are.”

Marguerite Duras book The Lover

Source: The Lover

“When it's in a book I don't think it'll hurt any more… exist any more. One of the things writing does is wipe things out. Replace them.”

Marguerite Duras book The Lover

Source: The Lover

“Suddenly, all at once, she knows, knows that he doesn't understand her, that he never will, that he lacks the power to understand such perverseness. And that he can never move fast enough to catch her.”

Marguerite Duras book The Lover

Source: The Lover

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