Men like women who write. Even though they don't say so. A writer is a foreign country.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that men appreciate women writers, even if they do not openly express it, and likens writers to being from a different world.
Marguerite Duras expresses the sentiment that men subconsciously admire and are drawn to women who are writers, although this appreciation may not be verbally acknowledged. The comparison of a writer to a 'foreign country' implies that the unique perspective and experiences that writers possess create an allure that is intriguing and often unrecognized by those outside the literary realm.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech about the importance of women's voices in literature.
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 Iβm 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 Iβll 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?
Love is a flower that grows in any soil, works its sweet miracles undaunted by autumn frost or winter snow, blooming fair and fragrant all the year, and blessing those who give and those who receive.
It is a beautiful trait in the lover's character, that they think no evil of the object loved.
A broken heart in real life isn't half as dreadful as it is in books. It's a good deal like a bad tooth, though you won't think THAT a very romantic simile. It takes spells of aching and gives you a sleepless night now and then, but between times it lets you enjoy life and dreams and echoes and peanut candy as if there were nothing the matter with it.
I used to say that if something happened to my mother, I wanted to die with her. That's because I loved her so much. I want to live so I can carry out the essence of what she has shown me: kindness and goodness.
Governments move armies, but only individuals can move hearts. And with every act of love that emanates from any of us, we are activating miracles, adding to a spiritual ocean that in time will purify our planet of all vestiges of fear. Love alone can triumph over hate, and if we give it the chance, it will.
To the lover the loved one always appears as solitary.
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