Marguerite Duras Quotes

The tragedy of life is not that man loses but that he almost wins.

Hell begins on the day when God grants us a clear vision of all that we might have achieved, of all the gifts which we have wasted, of all that we might have done which we did not do.

Just sitting around waiting for my life to begin, while it was all just slipping away.

I think I'm what they call a never-was.

It's better sometimes when we don't get to touch our dreams.

There are many things that I feel I have missed out on.

It is bitter to think of one's best years disappearing in this unpolished country.

Sometimes when you miss out on points, it is a pity, it is a shame, because we tried to do everything in the game.

We are like roses that have never bothered to bloom when we should have bloomed and it is as if the sun has become disgusted with waiting

One is not allowed a grief for a life never lived. Yet one has buried the fruit of love, and a great deal of hope and many dreams.

When I was young, and I'd get A's, I'd get this good feeling of all the things that I could be. And then I'd never became any of them.

One voyage to the East and a man could live as rich as a lord until the end of his days. When he'd been younger, Davos had dreamed of making such voyages himself. But the years went dancing by like moths around a flame, and somehow the time had never been quite right.

In this moment she felt that she had been robbed of an enormous number of valuable things, whether material or intangible: things lost or broken by her own fault, things she had forgotten and left in houses when she moved: books borrowed from her and not returned, journeys she had planned and had not made, words she had waited to hear spoken to her and had not heard, and the words she meant to answer with. . . .

Caroline Waverly: Sometimes we hurt more for what might have been than for what is.

The wealthiest places in the world are not gold mines, oil fields, diamond mines or banks. The wealthiest place is the cemetery. There lies companies that were never started, masterpieces that were never painted… In the cemetery there is buried the greatest treasure of untapped potential. There is a treasure within you that must come out. Don’t go to the grave with your treasure still within YOU.

In one split second I saw everything I could be, everything I want to be. And all that I'm not.

It is a most mortifying reflection for a man to consider what he has done, compared to what he might have done.

We've all got a black book of missed opportunities.

I feel, in the end, as if everything I've done has been a failure.

I felt like if I wasn't around, maybe my shot would be gone.

Sometimes I feel like a has-been who never was.

There is no greater harm than that of time wasted.

I was 19 years old, pumping gas and going nowhere. I was kind of a high school dropout at that point because I had left school to play hockey, but no one drafted me.

It took years, honestly, to deal with the disappointment of Beijing.

Hope and wishes for all that delights will sour in the midst of action not taken and words unsaid.