Annie Ernaux Quotes & Sayings

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

Maybe the true purpose of my life is for my body, my sensations and my thoughts to become writing, in other words, something intelligible and universal, causing my existence to merge into the lives and heads of other people. — Annie Ernaux

Where are the eyes of my childhood, those fearful eyes she had thirty years ago, the eyes that made me? — Annie Ernaux

She teaches me that the world is made to be pounced on and enjoyed, and that there is absolutely no reason at all to hold back. — Annie Ernaux

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