The Ravishing of Lol Stein Quotes

“That she had so completely recovered her sanity was a source of sadness to her. One should never be cured of one's passion.”
― Marguerite Duras, The Ravishing of Lol Stein

“She had lived her early years as though she were waiting for something she might, but never did, become.”
― Marguerite Duras, The Ravishing of Lol Stein

“In a certain state of mind, all trace of feeling is banished. Whenever I remain silent in a certain way, I don't love you, have you noticed that?”
― Marguerite Duras, The Ravishing of Lol Stein

“All that remains of that minute is time in all its purity, bone-white time.”
― Marguerite Duras, The Ravishing of Lol Stein

“A prolonged silence ensues. The reason for the silence is our growing interest one for the other. No one is aware of it, no one yet; no one? am I quite sure?”
― Marguerite Duras, The Ravishing of Lol Stein

“She lavishes pain with generosity.”
― Marguerite Duras, The Ravishing of Lol Stein

“They look at each other endlessly, endlessly,”
― Marguerite Duras, The Ravishing of Lol Stein

“Que se serait-il passé ? Lol ne va pas loin dans l'inconnu sur lequel s'ouvre cet instant. Elle ne dispose d'aucun souvenir même imaginaire, elle n'a aucune idée sur cet inconnu. Mais ce qu'elle croit, c'est qu'elle devait y pénétrer, que c'était ce qu'il lui fallait faire, que ç'aurait été pour toujours, pour sa tête et pour son corps, leur plus grande douleur et leur plus grande joie confondues jusque dans leur définition devenue unique mais innommable faute d'un mot. J'aime à croire, comme je l'aime, que si Lol est silencieuse dans la vie c'est qu'elle a cru, l'espace d'un éclair, que ce mot pouvait exister. Faute de son existence, elle se tait. Ç'aurait été un mot-absence, un mot-trou, creusé en son centre d'un trou, de ce trou où tous les autres mots auraient été enterrés. On n'aurait pas pu le dire mais on aurait pu le faire résonner. Immense, sans fin, un gong vide, il aurait retenu ceux qui voulaient partir, il les aurait convaincus de l'impossible, il les aurait assourdis à tout autre vocable que lui-même, en une fois il les aurait nommés, eux, l'avenir et l'instant. Manquant, ce mot, il gâche tous les autres, les contamine, c'est aussi le chien mort de la plage en plein midi, ce trou de chair.”
― Marguerite Duras, The Ravishing of Lol Stein

“I desperately want to partake of the world which emerges from the lips of Lol Stein, I want to be a part of this lie which she has forged. Let her bear me with her, let our affair take, from this point forth, a different course, let her consume and crush me with the rest, I shall bend to her will, let my hope be to be crushed with the rest, to be bent to her will.”
― Marguerite Duras, The Ravishing of Lol Stein

“She, who does not see herself, is thus seen, in others. Therein lies the omnipotence of this substance whereof she is made, without any particular ties.”
― Marguerite Duras, The Ravishing of Lol Stein

“By its absence, this word ruins all the others, it contaminates them, it is also the dead dog on the beach at high noon, this hole of flesh. How were other words found? Hand-me-downs from God knows how many love affairs like Lol Stein’s, affairs nipped in the bud, trampled upon, and from massacres, oh! you’ve no idea how many there are, how many blood-stained failures are strewn along the horizon, piled up there, and, among them, this word, which does not exist, is none the less there: it awaits you just around the corner of language, it defies you—never having been used—to raise it, to make it arise from its kingdom, which is pierced on every side and through which flows the sea, the sand, the eternity of the ball in the cinema of Lol Stein.”
― Marguerite Duras, The Ravishing of Lol Stein

“Thoughts born and reborn, daily, always the same thoughts that come crowding in, come to life and breathe, in an accessible, boundless universe, out of which one thought, and only one, eventually manages at long last to make itself heard, become visible, slightly more visible than the others, pressuring Lol, somewhat more insistently than the others, to retain it.”
― Marguerite Duras, The Ravishing of Lol Stein

“During this period, they say, Lol's collapse was marked by signs of suffering. But what is one to make of suffering which has no apparent cause?”
― Marguerite Duras, The Ravishing of Lol Stein

“Sa main ouverte posée sur mon bras préfigure un avenir multiforme et unique, main rayonnante et unie aux phalanges courbées, cassées, d'une légèreté de plume et qui ont, pour moi, la nouveauté d'une fleur.”
― Marguerite Duras, The Ravishing of Lol Stein

“Elle qui se ne voit pas, on la voit ainsi, dans les autres.”
― Marguerite Duras, Le ravissement de Lol V. Stein

“They are neither happy nor unhappy. Their union is constructed upon indifference, in a way which is general and which they apprehend moment by moment, a union from which all preference is excluded. They are together, two trains which meet and pass, around them the landscape, sensuous and lushly green, is the same, they see it, they are not alone.”
― Marguerite Duras, The Ravishing of Lol Stein

“Other ties bind them in a grip which is not one of sentiment or of happiness, it is something else which bestows neither joy nor sorrow.”
― Marguerite Duras, The Ravishing of Lol Stein

“For several weeks she has sometimes wished she had a bed, or something akin to a bed, right there where she was, a bed on which to lay this heavy, leaden body, this body so difficult to move, this thankless and tender maturity, just on the verge of falling down upon an unresponsive, all-devouring earth. Ah, what is this body with which she suddenly feels herself saddled? Whatever became of the indefatigable, birdlike body that had been hers up till now?”
― Marguerite Duras, The Ravishing of Lol Stein

“Each day, following her walk, she must have felt all the more reassured: if she willed it, people scarcely saw her, she was almost invisible. She thought that she had been cast into a mold, the identity of which was extremely vague and to which a variety of names might be given, an identity whose visibility she could control.”
― Marguerite Duras, The Ravishing of Lol Stein

“Michael Richardson’s eyes had grown brighter. His face had tightened into the full of maturity. Pain was etched upon it, ancient, primordial pain. The moment they saw him again this way, they knew that nothing—no word, no earthly act of violence-could have the least effect upon the change in Michael Richardson. That it now had to be played out to the bitter end. Michael Richardson’s new tale had already begun to take shape.”
― Marguerite Duras, The Ravishing of Lol Stein

“But what is there about me I am so completely unaware of and which she summons me to know?”
― Marguerite Duras, The Ravishing of Lol Stein

“I know Lol Stein in the only way I can: through love.”
― Marguerite Duras, The Ravishing of Lol Stein

“No matter where she is, it is as though Lol is there for the first time. She no longer experiences the invariable distance that memory provides: she is there, in the present.”
― Marguerite Duras, The Ravishing of Lol Stein

“To level the terrain, to dig down into it, to open the tombs wherein Lol is feigning death, seems to me fairer - given the necessity to fill in the missing links of Lol Stein's story - than to fabricate mountains, create obstacles, rely on chance. And, knowing this woman, I believe she would prefer that I compensate in this way for the lack of cold, hard facts about her life.”
― Marguerite Duras, The Ravishing of Lol Stein

“The only times she did speak was to say how impossible it was for her to express how boring and long it was, how interminable it was, to be Lol Stein. They asked her to try and pull herself together. She didn't understand why she should, she said. The difficulty she experienced in searching for a single word seemed insurmountable. She acted as though she expected nothing further from life.”
― Marguerite Duras, The Ravishing of Lol Stein

“– Dans un certain état toute trace de sentiment est chassée. Je ne
vous aime pas quand je me tais d’une certaine façon. Vous avez remarqué ?

– J’ai remarqué.

Elle s’étire, elle rit.

– Et puis je recommence à respirer, dit-elle.”
― DURAS (M.)., The Ravishing of Lol Stein

“test”
― DURAS (M.)., The Ravishing of Lol Stein