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

“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