"Writing is like Weeping"

"And for me, writing was like weeping. A happy book was indecent, unseemly. We ought to wear mourning as a sign of civilization, a sign that we remember every man-made death of any kind, whether it took place in prison or in war."

From a memoir by Marguerite Duras, Yann Andrea Steiner, translated from the French by Babara Bray, Page 27