Marguerite Duras, from Practicalities:

This book helped us pass the time. From the beginning of autumn to the end of winter[....] none of the pieces deals with a topic exhaustively. And one reflects my general views about a particular subject[....] At the most the book represents what I think sometimes, some days, about some things[....] The book has no beginning or end, and it hasn't got a middle either. If it's true that every book must have a raison d'etre, this isn't a book at all. Nor is it a journal, or journalism - it doesn't concern itself with ordinary events. Let's just say it's a book intended to be read[....] I had doubts about publishing it in this form, but no previous or current genre could accommodated such a free kind of writing, these return journeys between you and me, and between myself and myself, in the time we went through together.

I'd like to write a book the way I'm writing at this moment, the way I'm talking to you at this moment. I'm scarcely conscious of the words coming out of me. Nothing seems to being said but the almost nothing there is in all words.

When I was writing The Lover I felt I was discovering something: it was there before me, before everything, and would still be there after I'd come to think things were otherwise - that it was mine, that it was there for me. It was more or less as I've described, and the process of writing it down was so smooth it reminded you of the way you speak when you're drunk, when what you say always seems simple and clear.