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?
Children are the anchors that hold a mother to life.
Family dramas are tough, as a playwright. Most stories are about characters going on a trip or a new character coming to town, because that's how you learn information about them. But with family, they all know each other already. There's years of history in every interaction.
There are just so many stories that are buried on family trees.
My mother made countless sacrifices so that her children - and all children - could grow up in a better nation and world.
My mother is my root, my foundation. She planted the seed that I base my life on, and that is the belief that the ability to achieve starts in your mind.
I wonder if anyone can ever succeed in making their children content.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.