Violette Leduc

My mother never took my hand.

At the age of five, of six, at the age of seven, I used to begin weeping sometimes without warning, simply for the sake of weeping, my eyes open wide to the sun, to the flowers... I wanted to feel an immense grief inside me, and it came.

There's no sustenance in the past.

To find relief in what has been, we must make ourselves eternal.

I was afraid of having to present my big nose to strangers.