Violette Leduc Quotes

To have an inner life, to think, to juggle and leap, to become a tightrope walker in the world of ideas. To attack, to riposte, to refute, what a contest, what acclaim. To understand. The most generous word of all. Memory. To retain, a geyser of felicity. Intelligence. The agonizing poverty of my mind. Words and ideas flitting in and out like butterflies. My brain a dandelion seed blown in the wind.

I was afraid of having to present my big nose to strangers.

We are talking. It's a shame. What is said is murdered. Our words that will not grow any bigger or any lovelier will wilt inside our bones. Words wither feelings.

I give myself to adjectives body and soul, I die with pleasure for them.

My mother never took my hand.

To write is to inform against others.

To find relief in what has been, we must make ourselves eternal.

Drink, my angel; everything I have inside me is yours, soak it up through the paper, through the sleeve of my coat. Suck my blood out of the hollow of my elbow where you are lying, where you are keeping warm. It's just as you please, it will always be just as you please from now on.

I contemplated her, I was remembering her in this present, I had her beside me from last moment to last moment. When you are in love you are always on a railway platform.

Her eyes were misting over, her heart was talking on her lips. To need everything when everything is finished. She no longer knew whether she was sad or whether it was hunger. To live like that, head bent forward, chin resting down near her breasts, without muscles, without sinews, without vertebrae.
She smiled a martyr's smile for her own benefit: for her wretchedness was also a tenderness, and resignation is not the same as oblivion.

There's no sustenance in the past.