Jacqueline Harpman

how can you feel privileged not to have something that everyone else has?

Perhaps, somewhere, humanity is flourishing under the stars, unaware that a daughter of its blood is ending her days in silence.

I cannot mourn for what I have not known.

‘I have no idea what you mean by madness. You know I’m not like the rest of you. I haven’t experienced the things you miss so badly, or if I ever did, I don’t remember anything, and that hasn’t done me any harm. To me it feels as if I’ve always been alone, even among all of you, because I’m so different. I’ve never really understood you, I didn’t know what you were talking about.’

I acquired a perfectly useless knowledge, but I enjoyed it. I felt as if I had embellished my mind and that made me think of jewels, those objects which women used to adorn their beauty, in the days when beauty had a purpos

mistress of silence, owner of bunkers and corpses.

Or, they explain why they felt it was appropriate to publish a new translation of Proust, because previous efforts, laudable though they may be, lacked something or other. But why translate when it must have been so easy to learn different languages and read anything you wanted directly? These things leave me utterly baffled.

Even if I’d led a normal life, like the women before, I would still have found myself at the dawn of my last day.

Perhaps you never have time when you are alone? You only acquire it by watching it go by in others

If someone spoke to me, there would be time, the beginning and end of what they said
to me, the moment when I answered, their response. The briefest conversation creates time.