the motorway of the word

In this sort-of-a-book which isn´t really a book at all I´d have liked to talk about this and that , as one does all the time on an ordinary day just like any other. To drive along the motorway of the word, slowing down or stopping as I felt inclined, for no particular reason. But it´s impossible - you can´t get away from the road itself and the way it´s going ; you can´t not go anywhere ; you can´t just talk without starting out form a particular point of knowledge or ignorance, and arrive somewhere at random amid the welter of other words.You can´t simultaneously know and not know. And so this book, which I´d have liked to reemble a motorway going in all directions at once, will merely be a book that tries to go everywhere but goes to just one place at a time; which turns back and sets out again the same as everyone else, the same as every other book. The only alternative is to say nothing. But that can´t be written down.

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Marguerite Duras, Practicalities