Exteriors Quotes

“...(in the past I would listen to a record three, five, ten times running, waiting for something that never happened). A book offers more deliverance, more escape, more fulfilment of desire. In songs one remains locked in desire. (The lyrics are not that important, only the melody matters; so I understood nothing of what the Platters or the Beatles were saying.) There are no places, no scenes, no characters, only oneself and one’s longing. Yet the very starkness and paucity of music allow me to recall a whole episode of my life and the girl I used to be when I listen to I’m Just a Dancing Partner thirty years later. Whereas the beauty and fullness of The Beautiful Summer and In Search of Lost Time, which I have reread two or three times, can never give me back my life.”
― Annie Ernaux, Journal du dehors

“I believe that desire, frustration and social and cultural inequality are reflected in the way we examine the contents of our shopping cart or in the words we use to order a cut of beef or to pay tribute to a painting; that the violence and shame inherent in society can be found in the contempt a customer shows for a cashier or in the vagrant begging for money who is shunned by his peers - in anything that appears to be unimportant and meaningless simply because it is familiar or ordinary.”
― Annie Ernaux, Exteriors

“So it is outside my own life that my past existence lies: in passengers commuting on the Métro or the RER; in shoppers glimpsed on escalators at Auchan or in the Galeries Lafayette; in complete strangers who cannot know that they possess part of my story; in faces and bodies which I shall never see again. In the same way, I myself, anonymous among the bustling crowds on streets and in department stores, must secretly play a role in the lives of others.”
― Annie Ernaux, Exteriors

“Her comments reflect the perfect correspondence that exists between the younger generation and their epoch, and the belief that what has ‘just come out’ is always better. Otherwise, it would mean having no faith in oneself, let alone in the future.”
― Annie Ernaux, Exteriors

“We all need to assess the advantages and constraints of a profession, the material side of life. Not out of harmless curiosity, or to make polite conversation, but to learn about other people’s lives so that we can learn about our own life or the life we might have led.”
― Annie Ernaux, Exteriors

“I don’t speak to them, I only watch them and listen to them. Yet the emotions they arouse in me are real. I may also be trying to discover something about myself through them, their attitudes or their conversations. (Sitting opposite someone in the Métro, I often ask myself, ‘Why am I not that woman?’)”
― Annie Ernaux, Exteriors

“Why do I describe and detail this particular scene, like many others in the book? What is it I am desperately seeking in reality? Is it meaning?”
― Annie Ernaux, Exteriors

“Moreover, I am sure that you can learn more about yourself by embracing the outside world than by taking refuge in the intimacy of a journal – a genre which appeared barely two hundred years ago and which may well disappear. It is other people – anonymous figures glimpsed in the Métro or in waiting rooms – who revive our memory and reveal our true selves through the interest, the anger or the shame that they send rippling through us.”
― Annie Ernaux, Exteriors

“I believe that desire, frustration and social and cultural inequality are reflected in the way we examine the contents of our shopping trolley or in the words we use to order a cut of beef or to pay tribute to a painting; that the violence and shame inherent in society can be found in the contempt a customer shows for a cashier or in the vagrant begging for money who is shunned by his peers – in anything that appears to be unimportant and meaningless simply because it is familiar or ordinary.”
― Annie Ernaux, Exteriors

“So it is outside my own life that my past experience lies: in passengers commuting on the subway in RER; in shoppers glimpsed on escalators at Auchan or in the Galeries Lafayette; in complete strangers who cannot know that they possess part of my story; in faces and bodies which I shall never see again. In the same way, I myself, anonymous among the bustling crowds on streets and in department stores, must secretly play a role in the lives of others.”
― Annie Ernaux, Exteriors

“This morning, while I was out walking my dog, who is in heat, I met the little old lady who keeps her mongrel on a leash - a lively dog, on the alert as soon as he gets a whiff of us. We exchanged greetings. I am beginning to reach the age when I say hello to the old women I meet in my neighbourhood, anticipating the moment in life when I shall be one of them. When I was twenty I didn't notice them; they would be dead before my face had wrinkles.”
― Annie Ernaux, Exteriors

“Je m'aperçois que je cherche toujours les signes de la littérature dans la réalité.”
― Annie Ernaux, Journal du dehors

“I felt the urge to transcribe the scenes, words and gestures of unknown people whom one meets once and whom one never sees again; graffiti hastily scribbled on walls and erased; sentences overheard on the radio and news items read in the papers.”
― Annie Ernaux, Exteriors