When it's in a book I don't think it'll hurt any more ...exist any more. One of the things writing does is wipe things out. Replace them.
Interpretation
Writing can help us to forget and replace painful memories with new narratives.
In this quote, Marguerite Duras reflects on the power of writing as a means of processing and transforming past experiences. She suggests that when thoughts and emotions are captured in words, they lose their capacity to hurt us in the same way, as writing allows for a reimagining of our stories and a form of emotional catharsis.
In practice
In a workshop on creative writing, this quote can be used to inspire participants to explore their personal experiences.
Alcohol doesn't console, it doesn't fill up anyone's psychological gaps, all it replaces is the lack of God. It doesn't comfort man. On the contrary, it encourages him in his folly, it transports him to the supreme regions where he is master of his own destiny.
What she said was always strange. It had happened long ago. It seemed insignificant. And yet it was something you remembered forever. The words as well as the story. The voice as much as the words.
I'm still there, watching those possessed children, as far away from the mystery now as I was then. I've never written, though I thought I wrote, never loved, though I thought I loved, never done anything but wait outside the closed door.
Perhaps someone will have seen mine, the one Iβm waiting for, just as I saw him, in a ditch when his hands were making their last appeal and his eyes no longer could see. Someone who will never know what that man was to me; someone whose name Iβll never know.
Stormy skies, says Ernesto. He grieved for them. Summer rain. Childhood.
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?
I didn't start out to be a movie star. I started out to be an actor.
Filmmakers are going to make films, just like painters are going to paint.
Stories helped me unite parts of my existence that might otherwise have seemed irrevocably split by geography and time. And stories helped me find a future in which I, such a mongrel, could be comfortable.
I am curious about color as one would be visiting a new country, because I have never concentrated so closely on color expression. Up to now I have waited at the gates of the temple.
The writing life requires courage, patience, persistence, empathy, openness, and the ability to deal with rejection. It requires the willingness to be alone with oneself. To be gentle with oneself. To look at the world without blinders on. To observe and withstand what one sees. To be disciplined, and at the same time, take risks. To be willing to fail - not just once, but again and again, over the course of a lifetime.
Many artists use their own lives as a kind of case study to examine what it's like to be human.
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