Simple Passion Quotes

“Naturally I feel no shame in writing these things because of the time which separates the moment when they are written--when only I can see them--from the moment when they will be read by other people, a moment which I feel will never come. By then I could have had an accident or died; a war or a revolution could have broken out. This delay makes it possible for me to write today, in the same way I used to lie in the scorching sun for a whole day at sixteen, or make love wihout contraceptives at twenty: without thinking about the consequences”
― Annie Ernaux, Simple Passion

“Sometimes I wonder if the purpose of my writing is to find out whether other people have done or felt the same things or, if not, for them to consider experiencing such things as normal. Maybe I would also like them to live out these very emotions in turn, forgetting that they had once read about them somewhere.”
― Annie Ernaux, Simple Passion

“When I was a child, luxury was fur coats, evening dresses, and villas by the sea. Later on, I thought it meant leading the life of an intellectual. Now I feel that it is also being able to live out a passion for a man or a woman.”
― Annie Ernaux, Simple Passion

“From the very beginning, and throughout the whole of our affair, I had the privilege of knowing what we all find out in the end: the man we love is a complete stranger.”
― Annie Ernaux, Simple Passion

“I experienced pleasure like a future pain.”
― Annie Ernaux, Simple Passion

“I do not wish to explain my passion—that would imply that it was a mistake or some disorder I need to justify—I just want to describe it.”
― Annie Ernaux, Simple Passion

“Quand j'étais enfant, le luxe c'était pour moi les manteaux de fourrure et les villas au bord de la mer. Plus tard, j'ai cru que c'était de mener une vie d'intellectuel. Il me semble maintenant que c'est aussi de pouvoir vivre une passion pour un homme ou une femme”
― Annie Ernaux, Simple Passion

“A partir du mois de septembre l'année dernière, je n'ai plus rien fait d'autre qu'attendre un homme : qu'il me téléphone et qu'il vienne chez moi.”
― Annie Ernaux, Simple Passion

“When someone confided in me, a man or a woman who admitted they were having, or had had, "a crazy love affair with a guy" or "a very close relationship with someone," I occasionally felt like opening up. But once the excitement of sharing our secrets was over, I resented having let myself go, if only a little. Those conversations, when I had continually responded to the other person by saying "me too, it's the same for me, I did that too," suddenly seemed futile, removed from the reality of my own passion. Rather, something was lost through these outbursts.”
― Annie Ernaux;, Simple Passion

“One afternoon when he was there, I burned the living-room carpet down to the weft by placing a boiling coffee pot on top of it. I didn’t care. Quite the contrary. I was happy every time I caught sight of the mark as I remembered that afternoon with him. I”
― Annie Ernaux, Simple Passion

“Quite often I would write down on a sheet of paper the date, the time, and “he’s going to come,” along with other sentences, fears—that he might not come, that he might not feel the same desire for me.”
― Annie Ernaux, Simple Passion

“Once I start trying out the text, once it appears before me in public characters, I shall be through with innocence.”
― Annie Ernaux, Simple Passion

“Yo no era más que tiempo que pasaba a través de mí.”
― Annie Ernaux, Simple Passion

“I discovered what people are capable of, in other words, anything: sublime or deadly desires, lack of dignity, attitudes and beliefs I had found absurd in others until I myself turned to them. Without knowing it, he brought me closer to the world.”
― Annie Ernaux, Simple Passion

“Cuando era niña, para mí el lujo eran los abrigos de pieles, los vestidos de noche y las mansiones a orillas del mar. Más adelante, creí que consistía en llevar una vida de intelectual. Ahora me parece que consiste también en poder vivir una pasión por un hombre o una mujer.”
― Annie Ernaux, Simple Passion

“Él me había dicho: «No escribas un libro sobre mí». Pero no he escrito un libro sobre él, ni siquiera sobre mí. Me he limitado a expresar con palabras lo que su existencia, por sí sola, me ha dado. Una especie de obsequio devuelto.”
― Annie Ernaux, Simple Passion

“Para mí no había cronología en esta relación, sólo conocía la presencia o la ausencia.”
― Annie Ernaux, Simple Passion

“Throughout this period, all my thoughts and all my actions involved the repetition of history. I wanted to turn the present back into the past, opening on to happiness.”
― Annie Ernaux, Simple Passion

“Todo era una carencia sin fin, salvo el momento en que estábamos juntos haciendo el amor. Y, aun así, me obsesionaba el momento que vendría a continuación, cuando se hubiera marchado. Vivía el placer como un dolor futuro.”
― Annie Ernaux, Pura pasión

“Yet it is that surreal, almost non-existent last visit that gives my passion its true meaning, which is precisely to be meaningless, and to have been for two years the most violent and unaccountable reality ever.”
― Annie Ernaux, Simple Passion

“Gone with the Wind" are just as decisive as the Oedipus complex”
― Annie Ernaux, Passion simple

“Quelques fois je me disais qu'il passait peut-être toute une journée sans penser une seconde à moi. Je le voyais se lever, prendre son café, parler, rire, comme si je n'existais pas. Ce décalage avec ma propre obsession me remplissait d'étonnement. Comment était-ce possible. Mais lui-même aurait été stupéfait d'apprendre qu'il ne quittait pas ma tête du matin au soir. Il n'y avait pas de raison de trouver plus juste mon attitude ou la sienne. En un sens, j'avais plus de chance que lui.”
― Annie Ernaux, Simple Passion

“He medido el tiempo de otro modo, con todo mi cuerpo.”
― Annie Ernaux, Simple Passion

“No quiero explicar mi pasión —lo que equivaldría a considerarla un error o un desvarío por los que hay que justificarse—, sino sencillamente exponerla.”
― Annie Ernaux, Simple Passion

“The man who returned that evening wasn’t the man I was carrying inside me throughout the year when he was here, and when I was writing about him. I shall never see that man again. Yet it is that surreal, almost non-existent last visit that gives my passion its true meaning, which is precisely to be meaningless, and to have been for two years the most violent and unaccountable reality ever.”
― Annie Ernaux, Simple Passion

“Una muchacha, llena de rencor, dice: «Los amantes de mi madre solo han servido para hacerla soñar». ¿Qué mejor servicio podían prestarle?”
― Annie Ernaux, Pura pasión

“yo estaba segura de que jamás había habido en mi vida nada más importante —ni tener hijos, ni aprobar oposiciones, ni viajar lejos— que eso, estar en la cama con ese hombre a media tarde.”
― Annie Ernaux, Pura pasión

“Durante ese periodo de tiempo, todos mis pensamientos y mis actos eran la repetición de lo ocurrido antes. Quería obligar al presente a convertirse otra vez en un pasado abierto a la felicidad.”
― Annie Ernaux, Simple Passion

“Cand eram copil, pentru mine, luxul insemna mantouri de blana, rochii lungi si vile pe malul marii. Mai tarziu, am crezut ca inseamna sa duci o viata de intelectual. Acum mi se pare ca inseamna si sa poti trai o pasiune pentru un barbat sau o femeie.”
― Annie Ernaux, Simple Passion

“I do not wish to explain my passion – that would imply that it was a mistake or some disorder I need to justify – but simply to describe it.”
― Annie Ernaux, Simple Passion