Siri Hustvedt

“He was one of those people in New York who was purported to "know everybody". "Knowing everybody" is a phrase that denotes not having many relations with people but having relations with a few people generally thought to be significant and powerful.”

“Le cou n'est-il pas l'endroit où finit la tête et où le corps commence? (p.148)”

“D. W. Winnicott, un psychanaliste et pédiatre anglais: "Se réfugier dans la normalité, ce n'est pas la santé." (p.96)”

“Je n'écris plus, je suis écrite. (p.86)”

“Mój lęk brał się z czegoś dużo potężniejszego i nie tak realnego jak Mark czy Teddy Giles. Nie mógł się pomieścić w jednej osobie. Ta groźba była niewidzialna, podlegała przeobrażeniom i ogarniała dosłownie wszystko. Przerażenie wywołane czymś tak niechwytnym może wskazywać, że wpadłem w obłęd, że upodobniałem się do Dana, który w ataku paranoi potrafił niewinne klepnięcie po plecach odebrać jako próbę zamachu na jego życie, ale szleńswto przybiera różne formy. Większość z nas od czasu do czasu doznaje czegoś podobnego, ulegając powabowi psychicznego rozpadu. Wtedy jednak wcale nie flirtowałem z myślą o szaleństwie. Zdawałem sobie sprawę, że duszący mnie niepokój nie jest racjonalny, ale zarazem instynktownie wiedziałem, że choć to, czego się lękam, znajduje się poza sferą rozumu, ten nonsens również potrafi być realny.”

“Great books are the ones that are urgent, life-changing, the ones that crack open the reader’s skull and heart.”

“Reading is perception as translation. The inert signs of an alphabet become living meanings in the mind.”

“True stories can't be told forward, only backward. We invent them from the vantage point of an ever-changing present and tell ourselves how they unfolded.”

“The recollections of an older man are different from those of a younger man. What seemed vital at forty may lose its significance at seventy. We manufacture stories, after all, from the fleeting sensory material that bombards us at every instant, a fragmented series of pictures, conversations, odors, and the touch of things and people. We delete most of it to live with some semblance of order, and the reshuffling of memory goes on until we die.”

“The man was heavy with life. So often it’s lightness that we admire. Those people who appear weightless and unburdened, who hover instead of walk, attract us with their defiance of ordinary gravity. Their carelessness mimics happiness, but Bill had none of that.”

“How she loved you, her bubeleh, her boychik, her darling, but there was something cloying in that love, something theatrical and selfish, and you knew it and, as soon as you were big enough, you kept her at a safe distance.”

“We waste those eggs like crazy, of course, flushing them out every month in days of bleeding, but then most sperm are wholly useless as well, a thought to be considered elsewhere at greater length.”

“Time is not outside us, but inside. Only we live with past, present, and future, and the present is too brief to experience anyway; it is retained afterward and then it is either codified or it slips into amnesia.”

“And the pen, as it were, Dear Reader, is now in my hand, and I am claiming the advantage, taking it for myself, for you will notice that the written word hides the body of the one who writes. For all you know, I might be a MAN in disguise. Unlikely, you say, with all this feminist prattle flying out here and there and everywhere, but can you be sure?”

“Doesn’t the seventeenth-century use of the measurement yard for penis strike you as a bit of an exaggeration, unless the yard then was not the yard now?”

“Lots of women read fiction. Most men don't. Women read fiction written by women and by men. Most men don't. If a man opens a novel,. he likes to have a masculine name on the cover; it's reassuring somehow. You never know what might happen to that external genitalia if you immerse yourself in imaginary doings concocted by someone with the goods on the inside.”

“Shorn of intimacy and seen from a considerable distance, we are all comic characters, farcical buffoons who bumble through our lives, making fine messes as we go, but when you get close, the ridiculous quickly fades into the sordid or the tragic or the merely sad. [p. 73]”

“Widowers marry again because it makes their lives easier. Widows often don't, because it makes their lives harder. [p. 61]”

“The transience of human feeling is nothing short of ludicrous. My mercurial fluctuations in the course of a single evening made me feel as if I had a character made pf chewing gum. I had fallen into the ugly depths of self-pity, a terrain just above the even more hideous lowlands of despair. Then, easily distracted twit that I am, I had, soon after, found myself on maternal heights, where I had practically swooned with pleasure as I bobbed and fondled the borrowed homunculus next door. I had eaten well, drunk too much wine, and embraced a young woman I hardly knew. In short, I had thoroughly enjoyed myself and had every intention of doing so again. [p. 59]”

“I often felt the girls' speech was interchangeable, without any individuality whatsoever, a kind of herd-speak they had all agreed upon.”

“Libraries are sexual dream factories. The langour brings it on.”

“I will turn human anatomy into roses and stars and sea. I will dissect the beloveds body in metaphor.”

“The fictive is an emormous territory it turns out, its boundaries vague, and there is little certainty about where it begins and ends.”

“Reading is a private pursuit; one that takes place behind closed doors.”

“Correlation is not cause, it is just a 'music of chance'.”

“Not telling is just as interesting as telling I have found. Why speech, that short verbal journey from inside to outside can be excrutiating under certain circumstances is fascinating.”

“There is no future without a past, because what is to be cannot be imagined except as a form of repetition.”

“We chart delusions through collective agreement.”

“...a sense that even if every scrap of a life were saved, thrown into a giant mound and then carefully sifted to extract all possible meaning, it would not add up to a life.”

“My father once asked me if I knew where yonder was. I said I thought yonder was another word for there. He smiled and said, "No, yonder is between here and there.”

“Minusta tuntuu hyvältä nähdä luuni. Pidän siitä että näen ja tunnen ne. Kun minun ja luitteni välillä on liikaa lihaa, tuntuu kuin jotenkin etääntyisin itsestäni. Ymmärrätkö?”

“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.”

“La moraleja de todo esto es que la extraña relajación fomenta el placer y que la relajación es un estado de apertura casi completo ante cualquier cosa que pueda sobrevenir. También supone irreflexión. Empecé a preguntarme si existirían personas que viviesen la mayor parte del tiempo sin ataduras, sin pensar, dejándose llevar.”

“Todas las sustancias individuales fluyen y están en movimiento, perdiendo unas partes de sí mismas y recibiendo otras que vienen a ellas de cualquier sitio.”

“No existe el futuro sin el pasado, porque lo que va a suceder no se puede imaginar más como una forma de repetición.”

“I've always thought of wholeness and integration as necessary myths. We're fragmented beings who cement ourselves together, but there are always cracks. Living with the cracks is part of being, well, reasonably healthy”

“We must all allow ourselves the fantasy of projection from time to time, a chance to clothe ourselves in the imaginary gowns and tails of what has never been and never will be. This gives some polish to our tarnished lives, and sometimes we may choose one dream over another, and in the choosing find some respite from ordinary sadness. After all, we, none of us, can ever untangle the knot of fictions that make up that wobbly thing we call a self.”

“Om jag inte kände det jag känner när jag ser dig skulle du vara någon annan. Det vore hemskt. Om jag inte mindes att jag älskar dig, menar jag. (190)”

“Hon tog till sig en liten del av det som fanns där, bäcken bakom vårt hus, skogarna med sina stenar och sin mossa och buskvegetation, och blodroten, blåklockorna och violerna som spirade i den våta jorden varje vår. Allt detta blev henne förtroget, men fälten med sina ändlösa rader som strålade samman vid horisonten under en oändlig himmel rymde ingen riktig mening för henne. Hur älskar man så mycket tomhet? (189)”

“En händelse utmärker sig. En gång när vi var ute tillsammans hade Marit på sig en ullig rosa tröja som fällde som en collie om våren. Jag måste ha hållit henne tätt intill mig när vi sa godnatt, för nästa morgon upptäckte jag att tröjan hade luddat av sig på min jacka som nästan var alldeles skär. Under den halvtimme som det tog mig att få bort luddet vällde det upp en överväldigande känsla av ömhet inom mig, den sortens ömhet som uppslukar en helt och hållet och gör kroppen svag. Om jag fick veta att jag bara kunde spara en enda minnesbild ur livet och att alla de andra måste försvinna, skulle jag välja denna, inte så mycket av romantiskt nostalgiska skäl utan för att händelsen markerade ett betydelsefullt ögonblick i livet. Den pekade framåt mot vårt giftermål, mot de två barn vi skulle få tillsammans, det hem vi skapade och den glädje och sorg vi skulle dela.Jag tänker mig far sitta på sängkanten eller på en stol i ett litet rum med jackan i knäet. När han tar de som troligen var angoraludd mellan tummen och pekfingret och kastar det i en papperskorg eller samlar ihop det till en boll att slänga senare, förstår han att han är förälskad. Det händer inte medan han tittar på den unga kvinnan eller kysser henne, inte ens när han senare den kvällen ligger i sängen och tänker på henne. Det händer följande morgon, när han upptäcker att hennes tröja har blandat sig med hans jacka. Tillsammans blir plaggen drivkraften i en metafor som jag anar att far bara upplevde subliminalt. Dolt bakom den "nästan skära" jackan finns löftet om två passionerade kroppar, den ena inuti den andra. Som gammal minns han intensiteten i sina känslor och förstår att saker och ting tog en ny vändning i det ögonblicket. Jag tror att det fanns mycket som far ångrade, mer eller mindre med rätta, men inte den halvtimme som han tillbringade med en luddig jacka ensam i sitt rum i Oslo. (180-181)”

“Vi läser av varandra genom ögonen, och anatomiskt är ögonen en förlängning av hjärnan. När vi fångar någons blick ser vi in i en tankevärld. En människa utan ögon känns oroande av det enkla skälet att ögonen är dörrarna till jaget. (49)”

“Es imposible adivinar el final de una historia mientras la estás viviendo; carece de contornos y se constituye como una serie de palabras y datos incipientes y, para ser sinceros, nunca recuperamos toda la información de aquello que fue.”

“El tiempo no es algo externo a nosotros, vive en nuestro interior. Sólo nosotros vivimos el pasado, presente y futuro, y el presente es demasiado efímero para que seamos plenamente conscientes de él; sólo después lo recordamos y entonces lo hacemos de forma codificada, si no se disuelve en la amnesia.”

“All I can say is that every time I'm with him, she's there. She walks through every game I play with him. She whispers behind me every time I talk to him. When we draw, she's there. When we build blocks, she's there. When I scold him, she's there. Whenever I look up, she's there.”

“Natürlich ist ein Selbst viel umfassender als der innere Erzähler. Die Insel des selbst-bewussten Geschichtenerzählers liegt mitten in einem Meer von Unbewusstem, über das wir nichts wissen, nie etwas wissen werden oder das wir vergessen haben. Es gibt vieles in uns, das wir nicht beherrschen oder wollen, aber das bedeutet nicht, dass es unwichtig wäre, eine Erzählung für uns selbst zu finden. In der Sprache bilden wir den Lauf der Zeit so ab, wie wir ihn empfinden – das Es war, es ist, es wird sein. Wir abstrahieren, denken und erzählen. Wir ordnen unsere Erinnerungen und verknüpfen sie miteinander und diese Bruchstücke bekommen einen Besitzer: das autobiographische Ich, das nicht ohne ein Du ist. Für wen erzählen wir denn schließlich? Auch allein in unseren Köpfen ist ein vorausgesetzter anderer dabei, die zweite Person unserer Rede.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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”

“In May, she wrote to tell me that she was coming to New york or a week in June. She was going to stay with me, but her letters made it clear that the visit didnt mean a resumption for our old life. As the day approached, my agitation mounted. By the morning of her arrival, it had reached a pitch that felt something like an inner scream.The very thought that I would soon see Erica again didnt excite me as much as wound me. As I wandered around the loft trying to calm myself, I realized that I was holding my chest like a man who had just been stabbed. After sitting down, I tried to untangled that feeling of injury but couldnt do it - not fully.”

“Our memory fragments don't have any coherence until they're imagined in words. Time is a property of language, of syntax, and tense.”