There is no reason we should expect young children to enter the nocturnal darkness of sleep and dreams without help. Siri Hustvedt More Quotes by Siri Hustvedt More Quotes From Siri Hustvedt I don't want the words to be naked the way they are in faxes or in the computer. I want them to be covered by an envelope that you have to rip open in order to get at. I want there to be a waiting time -a pause between the writing and the reading. I want us to be careful about what we say to each other. I want the miles between us to be real and long. This will be our law -that we write our dailiness and our suffering very, very carefully. Siri Hustvedt rip real reading All human states are organic brain states - happiness, sadness, fear, lust, dreaming, doing math problems and writing novels - and our brains are not static. Siri Hustvedt sadness dream writing We sometimes imagine we want what we don't really want. Siri Hustvedt imagine want sometimes Dreaming is another form of thinking, more concrete, more economical, more visual, and often more emotional than the thoughts of the day, but a thinking through of the day, nevertheless. Siri Hustvedt emotional dream thinking Intellectual curiosity about one's own illness is certainly born of a desire for mastery. If I couldn't cure myself, perhaps I could at least begin to understand myself. Siri Hustvedt curiosity intellectual desire Like countless first-year medical students, immersed in the symptoms of one disease after another, I am alert to the tingles and pangs, the throbs and quivers of my mortal body, each one of which is potentially a sign of the end. Siri Hustvedt disease body years Dreams are stories made by and for the dreamer. Siri Hustvedt stories made dream There's a phenomenology of being sick, one that depends on temperament, personal history, and the culture which we live in. Siri Hustvedt phenomenology sick culture That night as I lay in bed, I thought of several things I could have said and mourned the fact that my wit usually bloomed late, peaking when it no longer mattered, during the solitary hours close to midnight. Siri Hustvedt regret bed night Memory is essential to who we are, and memories can be both implicit and explicit - unconscious and conscious. Siri Hustvedt who-we-are essentials memories Bedtime rituals for children ease the way to the elsewhere of slumber - teeth brushing and pajamas, the voice of a parent reading, the feel and smell of the old blanket or toy, the nightlight glowing in a corner. Siri Hustvedt glowing reading children Women really are not supposed to be imaginative. That creativity of this kind is supposed to belong to men. You know, because women make babies. I find the double standards shocking. Siri Hustvedt creativity baby men Our brain and our whole nervous system and our whole body are only created in relation to other people and to the environment. So what we have here is an enormously complex notion of both consciousness and unconsciousness. That's why these models get very difficult, because you can't reduce our subjective and intersubjective experience to neural reductions. Siri Hustvedt consciousness brain people I think that it's important for people to read philosophy and literature is not because I think everyone should be a well-rounded human being, but because it will help you think better about what you are doing. Siri Hustvedt philosophy people thinking After years of having immersed myself in science, I do think that if you master several different ways of thinking, it makes your own thought processes more agile. Siri Hustvedt different thinking We lose ourselves in stories; that's the beauty of literary art. Siri Hustvedt literary-art stories art Good books, written by men or women, are ones in which you lose consciousness of the person writing the sentences. Siri Hustvedt writing men book I myself have perceived women's actions as more aggressive than I would have in men because I too am walking around with my own biases. The way to fight them is to become conscious of them. Siri Hustvedt fighting men way Every one of us is prone to implicit sexual prejudices, including women. Siri Hustvedt including implicit prejudice Whenever I sign books, I get this line over and over again from men: "I don't read fiction, but my wife does. Would you sign the book to her?" What are those men doing there? And where are their wives? Siri Hustvedt wife men book
