A house means a family house, a place specially meant for putting children and men in so as to restrict their waywardness and distract them from the longing for adventure and escape they've had since time began.
Interpretation
A house serves as a space for family and stability, guiding individuals away from their natural desires for adventure.
In this quote, Marguerite Duras reflects on the role of a house as not just a physical structure, but as a nurturing environment meant to contain and shape family life. It suggests that a home provides boundaries that help individuals—especially children—navigate their innate impulses for exploration and adventure, emphasizing the balance between safety and freedom in a familial setting.
In practice
This quote can be used in discussions about the importance of family in shaping one's identity.
Alcohol doesn't console, it doesn't fill up anyone's psychological gaps, all it replaces is the lack of God. It doesn't comfort man. On the contrary, it encourages him in his folly, it transports him to the supreme regions where he is master of his own destiny.
What she said was always strange. It had happened long ago. It seemed insignificant. And yet it was something you remembered forever. The words as well as the story. The voice as much as the words.
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.
Perhaps someone will have seen mine, the one I’m waiting for, just as I saw him, in a ditch when his hands were making their last appeal and his eyes no longer could see. Someone who will never know what that man was to me; someone whose name I’ll never know.
Stormy skies, says Ernesto. He grieved for them. Summer rain. Childhood.
A prolonged silence ensues. The reason for the silence is our growing interest one for the other. No one is aware of it, no one yet; no one? am I quite sure?
For I am my mother's daughter, and the drums of Africa still beat in my heart.
With my family, I'm trying to raise them to have respect for all people and make friends around the world and feel at home with the world and really live a truly global life because I think it's what forms them and it's really important to me.
Someday I want to have children and give them all the love I never had.
My parents told me I'd point to a bed of flowers and say 'Pink. Pretty,' before I knew any other words.
I urge you to pursue preserving your personal history to allow your children and grandchildren to know who you were as a child and what your hopes and dreams were.
I have a tendency to coddle my sons because I want to keep them safe, but I also want them to be strong and independent and curious and bold, and I worry that my coddling is going to have exactly the opposite effect.
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