## Metadata - Author: [[Annie Ernaux]] - Full Title: A Man's Place - Category: #books ## Highlights - in Rouen. She worked in an airless room, where the faint ([Location 196](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00541YW86&location=196)) - The land my father worked belonged to others. He saw no beauty in it, the magnificence of Mother Earth and other such myths were lost on him. ([Location 256](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00541YW86&location=256)) - As I write, I try to steer a middle course between rehabilitating a lifestyle generally considered to be inferior, and denouncing the feelings of estrangement it brings with it. This was the way we lived and so of course we were happy although we realized the humiliating limitations of our class. (We knew full well that “it wasn’t quite good enough at our place.”) Consequently I would like to convey both the happiness and the alienation we felt. Instead, it seems that I am constantly wavering between the two. ([Location 428](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00541YW86&location=428)) - His obsession: “What are people going to say?” (the neighbours, the customers, the world at large). ([Location 485](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00541YW86&location=485)) - My father saw patois as something old and ugly, a sign of inferiority. ([Location 496](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00541YW86&location=496)) - As a child, when I tried to express myself correctly, it was like walking down a dark tunnel. ([Location 512](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00541YW86&location=512)) - He would often joke with the customers who enjoyed a good laugh. Veiled references to sex. Scatological allusions. Irony was not his forte. On the radio he listened to quizzes and the programmes with chansonniers. He was always ready to take me to the circus, the fireworks or to see silly films. At the funfair we went on the ghost train and the big dipper, and visited the tent to see the fattest woman in the world and the Lilliputian. ([Location 519](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00541YW86&location=519)) - I wonder when this dream came to replace his own dream, which, he once confessed, was to run a smart café in town, one with passing trade, complete with terrace and a coffee machine behind the bar. Nothing came of it: insufficient funds, reluctance to start on something new and a defeatist attitude to life. What do you expect? ([Location 602](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00541YW86&location=602)) - “Happiness is a god who walks empty-handed” (Henri de Régnier). ([Location 643](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00541YW86&location=643)) - Maybe I am writing because we no longer had anything to say to each other. ([Location 676](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00541YW86&location=676)) - One day he said to me proudly: “I have never given you cause for shame.” ([Location 758](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00541YW86&location=758))