Violette Leduc
There's no sustenance in the past.
My mother never took my hand.
At the age of five, of six, at the age of seven, I used to begin weeping sometimes without warning, simply for the sake of weeping, my eyes open wide to the sun, to the flowers... I wanted to feel an immense grief inside me, and it came.
To find relief in what has been, we must make ourselves eternal.
I was afraid of having to present my big nose to strangers.
I walk without flinching through the burning cathedral of the summer. My bank of wild grass is majestic and full of music. It is a fire that solitude presses against my lips.Collection: Summer
To have an inner life, to think, to juggle and leap, to become a tightrope walker in the world of ideas. To attack, to riposte, to refute, what a contest, what acclaim. To understand. The most generous word of all. Memory. To retain, a geyser of felicity. Intelligence. The agonizing poverty of my mind. Words and ideas flitting in and out like butterflies. My brain a dandelion seed blown in the wind.Collection: Memories
We are talking. It's a shame. What is said is murdered. Our words that will not grow any bigger or any lovelier will wilt inside our bones. Words wither feelings.Collection: Talking
To write is to inform against others.Collection: Writing
I was and I always shall be hampered by what I think other people will say.Collection: Thinking
Often, we melt into our ecstasies as though they were jams, as though we were sinking into syrupy bowls of gooseberries, of raspberries, of bilberries.Collection: Jam