While I am watching the birds I believe I am comparatively immune from the assaults of life. The very indifference to humanity of these wild creatures affords me a certain safeguard. Where all else is dangerous, hostile and liable to inflict pain, they alone can do me no injury because, probably, they are not even aware of my existence. The birds are at once my refuge and my relaxation.

Anna Kavan

Categorized in : Believe Bird Pain

I know I've got a death wish. I've never enjoyed my life, I've never liked people. I love the mountains because they are the negation of life, indestructible, inhuman, untouchable, indifferent, as I want to be.

mountain wish people

Sometimes a savage beauty lured me into the sun and I would start to love the danger a little. On these occasions I felt the reluctant love drained painfully from me as blood drains from a deep wound. The tigers lapped my love's blood and remained enemies. The inhabitants of the day laughed at the gift I wanted to bring them, and I shut myself in my inner room to escape the betrayal of their arrogant mouths.

betrayal love blood

I had a friend, a lover. Or did I dream it? So many dreams are crowding upon me now that I can scarcely tell true from false: dreams like light imprisoned in bright mineral caves; hot, heavy dreams; ice-age dreams; dreams like machines in the head.

ice light dream

A terrible cold world of ice and death had replaced the living world we had always known. Outside there was only the deadly cold, the frozen vacuum of an ice age, life reduced to mineral crystals. [. . .] I drove at great speed, as if escaping, pretending we could escape. Although I knew there was no escape from the ice, from the ever-diminishing remnant of time that encapsuled us.

escaping ice age

Because of my fear that the daytime world would become real, I had to establish reality in another place.

real reality world

What can I do now? What am I to become? How can I live in this world I'm condemned to but can't endure? They couldn't stand it either, so they made a world of their own. Well, they have each other's company, and they are heroes, whereas I'm quite alone, and have none of the qualities essential to heroism - the spirit, the toughness, the dedication. I'm back where I was as a child, solitary, helpless, unwanted, frightened.

dedication hero children

Reality had always been something of an unknown quantity to me. by Anna Kavan

Reality had always been something of an unknown quantity to me.

quantity reality

Everything was quiet, as if the silence was listening. by Anna Kavan

Everything was quiet, as if the silence was listening.

silence listening quiet

To wait - only to wait - without even the final merciful deprivation of hope.Sometimes I think that some secret court must have tried and condemned me, unheard, to this heavy sentence.

secret waiting thinking

At last I feel identified with the mountains, clean, cold, hard,... by Anna Kavan

At last I feel identified with the mountains, clean, cold, hard, detached.

mountain cold lasts

The man has a curious inborn conviction of his own superiority which is quite unshakeable. All his life he has bullied and browbeaten those around him by his high-and-mightiness and his atrocious temper. As a boy he terrorized his entire family by his tantrums, when, if thwarted, he would throw himself on the floor and yell till he went blue in the face. It has been much the same ever since. Everyone's terrified of his rages. He has only to start grinding his teeth, and people fall flat before him.

men boys fall

You mustn't be so afraid of life - it's all we've got. Don't let... by Anna Kavan

You mustn't be so afraid of life - it's all we've got. Don't let it hurt you so much.

afraid-of-life it-hurts hurt

I had a curious feeling that I was living on several planes simultaneously; the overlapping of these planes was confusing.

curious confusing feelings

My ideas were confused. In a peculiar way, the unreality of the outer world appeared to be an extension of my own disturbed state of mind.

confused mind ideas

I had never before met anyone who owned a telephone and believed... by Anna Kavan

I had never before met anyone who owned a telephone and believed in dragons.

telephones mets dragons