There's a phenomenology of being sick, one that depends on temperament, personal history, and the culture which we live in. Siri Hustvedt More Quotes by Siri Hustvedt More Quotes From Siri Hustvedt Every painting is always two paintings: The one you see, and the one you remember. Siri Hustvedt painting remember two A book is a collaboration between the one who reads and what is read and, at its best, that coming together is a love story like any other. Siri Hustvedt collaboration together book There is no future without a past, because what is to be cannot be imagined except as a form of repetition. Siri Hustvedt form reflection past Our memory fragments don't have any coherence until they're imagined in words. Time is a property of language, of syntax, and tense. Siri Hustvedt coherence syntax memories Pain is always emotional. Fear and depression keep constant company with chronic hurting. Siri Hustvedt emotional pain hurt That is the strangeness of language: it crosses the boundaries of the body, is at once inside and outside, and it sometimes happens that we don't notice the threshold has been crossed. Siri Hustvedt language body sometimes The faculty of memory cannot be separated from the imagination. They go hand in hand. To one degree or another, we all invent our personal pasts. And for most of us those pasts are built from emotionally colored memories. Siri Hustvedt memories hands past Dreams are stories made by and for the dreamer, and each dreamer has his own folds to open and knots to untie. Siri Hustvedt stories made dream I've always thought of wholeness and integration as necessary myths. We're gragmented beings who cement ourselves together, but there are always cracks. Living with the cracks is part of being, well, reasonably healthy. Siri Hustvedt cracks healthy together The truth is that personality inevitably bleeds into all forms of our intellectual life. We all extrapolate from our own lives in order to understand the world. Siri Hustvedt intellectual personality order Memory offers up its gifts only when jogged by something in the present. It isn't a storehouse of fixed images and words, but a dynamic associative network in the brain that is never quiet and is subject to revision each time we retrieve an old picture or old words. Siri Hustvedt revision brain memories under our love making I felt a bleakness that couldnt be dispelled. The sadness was in both of us, and I think we pitied ourselves that night, as if we were other people looking down on the couple who lay together on the bed Siri Hustvedt sadness couple night Reading is a private pursuit; one that takes place behind closed doors. Siri Hustvedt imbibing reading doors Reading is perception as translation. The inert signs of an alphabet become living meanings in the mind. Siri Hustvedt perception reading mind There is no reason we should expect young children to enter the nocturnal darkness of sleep and dreams without help. Siri Hustvedt dream sleep children No matter how brilliant or accomplished they are, there is something emasculating for men in being pitted against a woman. It is even more true in creative fields already considered to be "squishy" and feminine, and it's a big problem because great women have been left off the record. Siri Hustvedt creative matter men Human beings are repetitive animals. All meaning is generated through repetition. Siri Hustvedt repetition humans animal I remember thinking how easy it is to speak in clichés, to steal a line from pulp fiction and let it fall. We can only hover around the inexpressible with our words anyway, and there is comfort in saying what we have heard before. Siri Hustvedt comfort fall thinking I think because mothers usually are the people who take care of us when we're little, and when we're little those mothers are omnipotent, perhaps men even more than women don't like to think about that dependency. That dependency is horror. Siri Hustvedt mother men thinking Every sickness has an alien quality, a feeling of invasion and loss of control that is evident in the language we use about it. Siri Hustvedt quality loss feelings
