Marguerite Duras Quotes

When you have parents who are a little out of their minds, somebody has to take responsibility.

My mom was my mother and father. My father lost his mind when I was about 4 years old. And my mom did everything she could to make sure that we was brought up right.

We all go a little mad sometimes.

My Father had a profound influence on me. He was a lunatic.

I remember my uncle and my father telling me that my mother didn't want me because I was blind. She thought being blind was a disgrace and a punishment from God. I understand that a lot of young mothers probably wouldn't know what to do in that situation, but over your life you learn to forgive everything.

I can only hope that neither of my daughters was scarred by their upbringing.

My father was a very unhappy person, very sarcastic, and my mother was very nervous and worried about what people thought. They weren't monsters, but it wasn't a good childhood.

Most of me was glad when my mother died. She was a handful, but not in a cute, festive way. More in a life-threatening way, that had caused me a long time ago to give up all hope of ever feeling good about having had her as a mother.

I was never taught how to raise a child, because I wasn't raised properly.

My mother sent me to psychiatrists since the age of four because she didn't think little boys should be sad. When my brother was born, I stared out the window for days. Can you imagine that?

Sanity calms, but madness is more interesting.

My dad's been responsible for a lot of my issues.

In Jenny Offill's remarkable first novel, 'Last Things,' 7-year-old Grace Davitt watches her mother, Anna, descend into madness and tries to make sense of the claustrophobic world that Anna has created for her.

My mother's feeling about men in general were always a bit of a mystery to me. She had difficulties in Puerto Rico with the men in her life. Her brothers abused her. It's very easy to be judgmental, but more often than not, there are mitigating circumstances, and children are not usually aware of those.

That's why I'm so crazy because my mom is crazy.

I guess you could say I'm a little crazy.

you may be right, I may be crazy, but it just might be a lunatic you're looking for

This tug-of-war often obscures what's also happening between us. I am your mother, the first mile of your road. Me and all my obvious and hidden limitations. That means that in addition to possibly wrecking you, I have the chance to give to you what was given to me: a decent childhood, more good memories than bad, some values, a sense of tribe, a run at happiness. You can't imagine how seriously I take that - even as I fail you. Mothering you is the first thing of consequence that I have ever done.

We are always children to our mothers.

Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on their environment and especially on their children than the unlived life of the parent.

Flirting with madness was one thing; when madness started flirting back, it was time to call the whole thing off.

Honestly, I believe that the mother-daughter relationship is magical, complex, potentially dangerous, profoundly powerful, and deeply transformative. To put it simply, all of us have this relationship, and in a very real way, "none of us comes out alive." We are all formed first as daughters and then tested as mothers. There's nothing like motherhood to make us reassess how we were as daughters.

One day my dad said, "If you guys ever stop singing, I'll drop you like a hot potato." That's what he said. It hurt me. You don't say that to children and I never forgot it.

When I was a kid, I never went to Disneyland. My ol' man told me Mickey Mouse died in a cancer experiment.

But you can't always tell - with somebody's mother, I mean. Mothers are all slightly insane.