Meghna

“Wer die Schule hingegen ohne Abschluss verließ, lernte früh, sich unwürdig zu fühlen, er war 'unfähig'. Das Loblied auf die Bildung verschleierte die Tatsache, dass Zugang zu ihr beschränkt war.”
― Annie Ernaux, Les Années

“I'm afraid of settling into this quiet and comfortable life, and afraid to have lived without being aware of it.”
― Annie Ernaux, The Years

“Immigration preserved the face of the helmeted road worker at the bottom of a hole in the highway, or that of the garbage collector beside a dumpster. Theirs was a purely economic existence, triumphantly assigned to them in a virtuous class debate each year by our students, who were convinced they possessed the best of all arguments against racism, i.e.: we need them for work that the French no longer want to do.”
― Annie Ernaux, The Years

“They will all vanish at the same time, like the millions of images that lay behind the foreheads of the grandparents, dead for half a century, and of the parents, also dead. Images in which we appeared as a little girl in the midst of beings who died before we were born, just as in our own memories our small children are there next to our parents and schoolmates. And one day we’ll appear in our children’s memories, among their grandchildren and people not yet born. Like sexual desire, memory never stops. It pairs the dead with the living, real with imaginary beings, dreams with history.”
― Annie Ernaux, Les Années