Simple Passion

by Annie Ernaux

I could even accept the thought of dying providing I had lived this passion through to the very end – without actually defining ‘to the very end’ – in the same way I could die in a few months’ time after finishing this book.

Children will always refuse to see the truth reflected in their mother’s absent stare and silent behaviour: at times they mean nothing to her, in the same way that grown-up kittens can mean nothing to a mother cat longing to go on the prowl.

From the very beginning, and throughout the whole of our affair, I had the privilege of knowing what we all find out in the end: the man we love is a complete stranger.

I experienced pleasure like a future pain.

The man who returned that evening wasn’t the man I was carrying inside me throughout the year when he was here, and when I was writing about him. I shall never see that man again.