Best 6 quotes of Patricia Duncker on MyQuotes

Love is not feeling, child, nor even the passion of lovers, which always seeks only its own gratification. It is the act of caring, of giving, the act of protecting the weak, the helpless, the imprisoned and the desperate. Love is the hand raised in defence. You cannot love and keep your hands clean.

You can say anything, anything, if it is beautifully said.

You write your first novel with the desperation of the damned. You're afraid that you'll never write anything else, ever again.

Suddenly, she employed those very English weapons: devious good manners and a rapid change of subject.

The cats are asleep at the end of my bed and all around me, the thundery silence of L'Escarènere, caught at last in the rising flood of warm air, carrying the sand from the south. The Alps are folded above in the flickering light. And on the desk in the room beneath lies the writing which insists that the only escape is through the absolute destruction of everything you have ever known, loved, cared for, believed in, even the shell of yourself must be discarded with contempt; for freedom costs no less than everything, including your generosity, self-respect, integrity, tenderness - is that really what i wanted to say? It's what I have said. Worse still, I have pointed out the sheer creative joy of this ferocious destructiveness and the liberating wonder of violence. And these are dangerous messages for which I am no longer responsible.

They were from different generations, culture, nations. But even these things did not divide them so much as their separate conceptions of what it meant to be a woman.