Some people are like that

She says, ‘Nothing can come from outside you and me to teach us.’
‘No knowledge, no ignorance?’
‘None. Some people are like that – closed – they can’t learn from anyone. Us, for example – we can’t learn anything, neither I from you nor you from me, nor from anyone, nor from anything, nor from what happens. Like mules.’
No matter how many centuries of oblivion pile up over their existences, their ignorance will have existed just as it is at that moment, on that date, in that cold light. They realize this and are delighted.
Also, that in a thousand years’ time this day will have existed for a thousand years to the day. And the ignorance of the whole world about what they’ve said today will have a date too. Without words, without ink to write it down or a book to read it in, it will have a date, a place in time. And they’re delighted about that too.
She says, ‘And so everything there is is here, in the room.’ And with the palm of her hand she indicates the tile floor, the sheets, the light, the bodies.

— Marguerite Duras, Blue Eyes, Black Hair (tr. B. Bray)