As a young woman, I was so eager to please that I served others' happiness and even their values before my own. It didn't earn me love, but it did deliver me to a place where I had to choose between what I thought of myself and what other people did. I chose myself.

Kathryn Harrison

Categorized in : People Young Others Happiness

For me, writing is inseparable from thinking. I could say the entire undertaking is a vast cerebral construct against my demons. It's the thing that I love. It's my identity.

Kathryn Harrison

identity writing thinking

Scars are stories, history written on the body

Kathryn Harrison

scar body stories

We're taught to expect unconditional love from our parents, but I think it is more the gift our children give us. It's they who love us helplessly, no matter what or who we are.

Kathryn Harrison

unconditional-love children thinking

There aren't many people in our history who have so completely surrendered themselves to a mission that they would give up their lives for it.

Kathryn Harrison

giving-up giving people

My days are as long as despair can make them.

Kathryn Harrison

despair long

The dizzy rapture of starving. The power of needing nothing. By force of will I make myself the impossible sprite who lives on air, on water, on purity.

Kathryn Harrison

force-of-will air water

Don’t portray yourself as who you want to be. Portray yourself as who you are.

Kathryn Harrison

who-you-are want

I've always been interested in the intersection between our rational and our unconscious lives.

Kathryn Harrison

intersections rational unconscious

Sometimes there's a sort of tear in the veil, and there are people who live in more than one dimension.

Kathryn Harrison

veils tears people

Writing is how I stay sane. It's completely necessary.

Kathryn Harrison

sane writing

I can't work out much about myself or what I see in the world around me unless I do it through writing.

Kathryn Harrison

work-out writing world

I like nudging readers into a slightly different perspective, but in a sly way - I want to be the writer who slips a stiletto in and out, to make so swift and clean a cut, it's not until a chapter ends that the reader looks down and sees she's bleeding and asks what happened.

Kathryn Harrison

perspective cutting want

I like vampires, tuberculosis, anything to do with blood. Then I read a biography of Rasputin and found out he'd had this daughter who had become a famous lion tamer and been billed as the daughter of the mad monk who was able to hypnotize animals with her eyes. It gave me a vision.

Kathryn Harrison

eyes me vision daughter

Lives that are so conspicuous have a claustrophobic feeling. Once you're in charge of running a country, you're under scrutiny all the time. That's a trap.

Kathryn Harrison

feeling you time country

We know the seductive alchemy of art. To transform private anguish into a narrative of truth, if not beauty; to make sense where there was none; to bring order out of chaos - these are the promises art makes.

Kathryn Harrison

promises truth beauty art

I am perfectly capable of writing things about myself that one doesn't discuss in polite company, but I was raised by people who said you don't discuss politics, you don't discuss religion, and you certainly don't discuss people's sex lives.

Kathryn Harrison

i-am myself you politics

I'm not an investigative journalist; I don't track crime or police blotters.

Kathryn Harrison

journalist crime track police

I don't care what people think about me. I care what people think about my work. As a young woman, I was so eager to please that I served others' happiness and even their values before my own.

Kathryn Harrison

woman me work happiness

I was the good girl who never needed disciplining, who made straight A's. I applied and was accepted to Stanford University.

Kathryn Harrison

never good university girl

I remember seeing my father only twice as a child for brief visits. As I grew up, I invented a father who was larger than life - stronger, smarter, more handsome, and even holier than other men.

Kathryn Harrison

handsome men life father