The Years Quotes

“To exist is to drink oneself without thirst.”
― Annie Ernaux, Les Années

“They will all vanish at the same time, like the millions of images that lay behind the foreheads of the grandparents, dead for half a century, and of the parents, also dead. Images in which we appeared as a little girl in the midst of beings who died before we were born, just as in our own memories our small children are there next to our parents and schoolmates. And one day we’ll appear in our children’s memories, among their grandchildren and people not yet born. Like sexual desire, memory never stops. It pairs the dead with the living, real with imaginary beings, dreams with history.”
― Annie Ernaux, Les Années

“She feels as if a book is writing itself just behind her; all she has to do is live. But there is nothing.”
― Annie Ernaux, Les Années

“at every moment in time, next to the things it seems natural to do and say, and next to the ones we’re told to think—no less by books or ads in the métro than by funny stories—are other things that society hushes up without knowing it is doing so. thus it condemns to lonely suffering all the people who feel but cannot name these things. then the silence breaks, little by little, or suddenly one day, and words burst forth, recognized at last, while underneath other silences start to form.”
― Annie Ernaux, Les Années

“Sauver quelque chose du temps où l'on ne sera plus jamais.”
― Annie Ernaux, Les Années

“Tout s'effacera en une seconde. Le dictionnaire accumulé du berceau au dernier lit s'éliminera. Ce sera le silence et aucun mot pour le dire. De la bouche ouverte il ne sortira rien. Ni je ni moi. La langue continuera à mettre en mots le monde. Dans les conversations autour d'une table de fête on ne sera qu'un prénom, de plus en plus sans visage, jusqu'à disparaître dans la masse anonyme d'une lointaine génération”
― Annie Ernaux, Les Années

“Everything will be erased in a second. The dictionary of words amassed between cradle and deathbed, eliminated. All there will be is silence and no words to say it. Nothing will come out of the open mouth, neither I nor me. Language will continue to put the world into words. In conversation around a holiday table, we will be nothing but a first name, increasingly faceless, until we vanish into the vast anonymity of a distant generation.”
― Annie Ernaux, The Years

“She has no name for that feeling of utter abandonment, nor the feeling that comes over her on fair days, when she stands in the courtyard from the photo, and the voice of the loudspeaker booms front behind the trees, and the music and commercials run together in an unintelligible blur. It is as if she were standing outside the fete, separated from some earlier thing.”
― Annie Ernaux, Les Années

“We scribbled down writers’ reflections on life, discovered the joys of describing ourselves to ourselves with shimmering turns of phrase, ‘existence is to drink oneself without thirst.’ We were overcome by nausea and a feeling of the absurd.”
― Annie Ernaux, Les Années

“Son corps est jeune et sa pensée vieille.”
― Annie Ernaux, Les Années

“By retrieving the memory of collective memory in an individual memory, she will capture the lived dimension of History.”
― Annie Ernaux, The Years

“It seems to her that her education is more than just a way to escape poverty. It is a weapon of choice against stagnation in a kind of feminine condition that arouses her pity, the tendency to lose oneself in a man, which she has experienced, and of which she is ashamed. She feels no desire to marry or have children. Mothering and the life of the mind seem incompatible. In any case, she'd be sure to be a bad mother. Her ideal is the union libre in the poem by Andre Breton.”
― Annie Ernaux, The Years

“In the humdrum routine of personal existence, History did not matter. We were simply happy or unhappy, depending on the day. The more immersed we were in work and family, said to be reality, the greater was our sense of unreality.”
― Annie Ernaux, Les Années

“Todas as imagens irão desaparecer. (...) Vão desperecer todas de uma só vez como aconteceu com milhares de imagens situadas atrás dos rostos dos avós mortos há meio século, dos pais também eles já mortos. (...) Subitamente, desaparecerão milhares de palavras que serviram para nomear as coisa, os rostos das pessoas, as ações e os sentimentos, para pôr ordem no mundo, para fazer bater o coração e humedecer o sexo.”
― Annie Ernaux, Les Années

“With the Walkman, for the first time music entered the body. We could live inside music, walled off from the world.”
― Annie Ernaux, The Years

“The profusion of things concealed the scarcity of ideas and the erosion of beliefs.”
― Annie Ernaux, The Years

“In opposition to the desires that made us restless, we were served the wisdom of limits: "You ask too much of life.”
― Annie Ernaux, The Years

“A vague and immense desire to create was in the air. Everyone claimed to be devoted to an artistic activity, or planned to be. All activities were equal, they agreed, and instead of painting or playing the flute, one could always create oneself through psychoanalysis.”
― Annie Ernaux, The Years

“Todo se borrará en un segundo. El diccionario acumulado de la cuna hasta el lecho de muerte se eliminará. Llegará el silencio y no habrá palabras para decirlo. De la boca abierta no saldrá nada. Ni yo ni mí. La lengua seguirá poniendo el mundo en palabras. En las conversaciones en torno a una mesa familiar seremos tan solo un nombre, cada vez más sin rostro, hasta desaparecer en la masa anónima de una generación remota.”
― Annie Ernaux, Los años

“A chaque moment du temps, à côté de ce que les gens considèrent comme naturel de faire et de dire, à côté de ce qu'il est prescrit de penser, autant par les livres, les affiches de métro que par les histoires drôles, il y a toutes les choses sur lesquelles la société fait silence et ne sait pas qu'elle le fait, vouant au mal être solitaire ceux et celles qui ressentent ces choses sans pouvoir les nommer. Silence qui est brisé un jour brusquement, ou petit à petit, et des mots jaillissent sur les choses, enfin reconnues, tandis que se reforment, au-dessous, d'autres silences.”
― Annie Ernaux, Les Années

“Immigration preserved the face of the helmeted road worker at the bottom of a hole in the highway, or that of the garbage collector beside a dumpster. Theirs was a purely economic existence, triumphantly assigned to them in a virtuous class debate each year by our students, who were convinced they possessed the best of all arguments against racism, i.e.: we need them for work that the French no longer want to do.”
― Annie Ernaux, The Years

“I'm afraid of settling into this quiet and comfortable life, and afraid to have lived without being aware of it.”
― Annie Ernaux, The Years

“The thing most forbidden, the one we'd never believed possible, the contraceptive pill became legal. We didn't dare to ask the doctor for a prescription and the doctor didn't offer, especially if one wasn't married - that would be indecent. We strongly sensed that with the pill, life would never be the same again. We'd be so free in our bodies it was frightening. Free as a man.”
― Annie Ernaux, The Years

“Felmenni a városba, álmodozni, maszturbálni és várakozni - így is össze lehet foglalni, miből áll egy vidéken töltött kamaszkor.”
― Annie Ernaux, Les Années

“« Sauver quelque chose du temps où l'on ne sera plus jamais. »”
― Annie Ernaux, Les Années

“Nothing equaled the bliss at the end of the day, after elbowing one’s way with the first passengers into the crowded RER, and inching as close as possible to the center aisle seats, and standing for these stations, of finally sitting down and closing one’s eyes, or doing a crossword.”
― Annie Ernaux, Les Années

“en realidad a todo el mundo le daba igual cómo se viviría dentro de cuarenta años, solo querían llegar vivos.”
― Annie Ernaux, Los años

“El objeto más envidiable y el más caro era el coche, sinónimo de libertad, de control total del espacio, y en cierta manera, del mundo.”
― Annie Ernaux, Los años

“Tout ce qui se trouvait dans les maisons avait été acheté avant la guerre. Les casseroles étaient noircies, démanchées, les cuvettes désémaillées, les brocs percés, colmatés avec des pastilles vissées dans le trou. Les manteaux étaient retapés, les cols de chemise retournés, les vêtements du dimanche passés au tous-les-jours. Qu'on n'arrête pas de grandir désespérait les mères, obligées de rallonger les robes d'une bande de tissu, d'acheter des chaussures une pointure au-dessus, trop petites un an après. Tout devait faire de l'usage, le plumier, la boîte de peintures Lefranc et le paquet de petits-beurre Lu. Rien ne se jetait. Les seaux de nuit servaient d'engrais au jardin, le crottin ramassé dans la rue après le passage d'un cheval à l'entretien des pots de fleurs, le journal à envelopper les légumes, sécher l'intérieur des chaussures mouillées, s'essuyer aux cabinets.

On vivait dans la rareté de tout. Des objets, des images, des distractions, des explications de soi et du monde, limitées au catéchisme et aux sermons de carême du père Riquet, aux dernières nouvelles de demain proférées par la grosse voix de Geneviève Tabouis, aux récits des femmes racontant leur vie et celle de leurs voisins l'après-midi autour d'un verre de café. Les enfants croyaient longtemps au Père Noël et aux bébés trouvés dans une rose ou un chou.

Les gens se déplaçaient à pied ou à bicyclette d'un mouvement régulier, les hommes les genoux écartés, le bas du pantalon resserré par des pinces, les femmes les fesses
contenues dans la jupe tendue, traçant des lignes fluides dans la tranquillité des rues. Le silence était le fond des choses et le vélo mesurait la vitesse de la vie.”
― Annie Ernaux, Les Années

“nos sentíamos rodeados de cosas ausentes que tendríamos derecho a comprar más tarde.”
― Annie Ernaux, Los años