My mother was scared of peo­ple in office — civil ser­vants, income tax inspec­tors, cus­toms men, bailiffs, cus­toms offi­cers, any­one whose job it was to enforce the law. She always felt in the wrong — the typ­i­cal, incur­able atti­tude of the poor. She never entirely got over it. But I did, through oral exams. Every time I passed one I felt I’d made some progress against the poverty endemic to our fam­ily. A way with words. It was like a phys­i­cal con­fronta­tion between me and soci­ety, there to try and destroy me. Singers and actors must go through the same expe­ri­ence with the audi­ence. The peo­ple who pay to hear you sing or speak are ene­mies you have to get the bet­ter of in order to sur­vive. But when you’ve done it once, after you’ve mas­tered the words and car­ried the audi­ence with you, it hap­pens to you all the time. You pre­tend it’s up to you not to dis­s­ap­point the peo­ple who’ve gone to the trou­ble of com­ing to hear you. But there’s more to it than that. Some­thing that verges on want­ing to kill the per­son who’s come to sit in judge­ment of you.

- Mar­guerite Duras from Prac­ti­cal­i­ties