I Who Have Never Known Men

by Jacqueline Harpman

Is there a satisfaction in the effort of remembering that provides its own nourishment, and is what one recollects less important than the act of remembering?

She couldn’t understand why someone would want knowledge that would be of no use to them, and I couldn’t get anything out of her.

If the only thing that differentiates us from animals is the fact that we hide to defecate, then being human rests on very little, I thought.

Some women say that it is for ourselves. What on earth can we do with it? I could have loved myself whether I was hunchbacked or lame, but to be loved by others, you had to be beautiful.’

If you do something that is forbidden, it is the action that is the target. If you do something that isn’t forbidden, and they intervene, then it’s not the activity that’s attracting attention, it’s you yourself.’

Perhaps, when someone has experienced a day-to-day life that makes sense, they can never become accustomed to strangeness.

Death is sometimes so discreet that it steals in noiselessly, stays for only a moment and carries off its prey,

I have spent my whole life doing I don’t know what, but it hasn’t made me happy.

but they died, as I am about to die, and what does having lived mean once you are no longer alive?

The reader and I thus mingled will constitute something living, that will not be me, because I will be dead, and will not be that person as they were before reading, because my story, added to their mind, will then become part of their thinking.