Quotes from Siri Hustvedt

Emotion is always part of perception, not distinct from it.

The tangible and intangible collide to cast a spell. But can a person or thing ever be stripped naked? Can we ever discover reality hiding under the meanings we give to people and things? I don't think so. And I don't think Fitzgerald thought so either. His book meditates on the necessity of fiction, not only as lies but as truths.

Are not dreams as much a part of living as waking life is?

fiction is necessary to life - not only as books but as dreams, dreams that frame the world and give it meaning.

I know, but he must have felt it that way, that evil was an emptiness, a lack of something, not a presence.' He turned his head fast and looked at me. 'That's what desire is, isn't it? The lack of something.

Tolerating cracks is part of being alive.

We bring our life stories, our prejudices, our grudges, our expectations, and our limitations with us to books….Openness to a book is vital, and openness is simply a willingness to be changed by what we read. This is not as easy as it sounds. Many people read to solidify their own views.

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.

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.

As John Ashbery once said, "Being a famous poet is the not the same thing as being famous.

Being alive is inexplicable, I thought. Consciousness itself is inexplicable. There is nothing ordinary in the world.

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?

nonsense can also be real

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

Do you know that I can't remember her face? Try as I may, it will not be conjured. I can tell you what she looked like; I can recite a description of her features, part by part, but I cannot evoke the whole face.' 'Don't you have a photograph?' 'Photographs!' He spat out the word. 'I'm talking about true recollection - seeing the face.

Pero claro está que las mentiras más espectaculares en absoluto necesitan ser perfectas. No dependen tanto de la habilidad del embustero como de las expectativas y los deseos del oyente.

In a way," I said to him, "that now you're talking about hardly exists. We feel it, but it's impossible to measure. The past is always eating up the present.

The second anniversary opened an internal crack in Sonia, a fissure through which she released the explosive feeling that had horrified her for two years. The conflagration that had burned so many, that had pushed people into the open air, onto the ledges from which they jumped, some of them on fire, had left its unspeakable images inside my niece. ...Sonia didn't want a world in which buildings fell down and wars were fought for no reason.

Stephen's face lost its tension, and 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.

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)

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.

Un libro es producto de la colaboración entre el lector y el texto y, en el mejor de los casos, ese encuentro da lugar a una historia de amor como cualquier otra.

With Stephen, I had become a sour, witless bore. With others, I could be light. Men I cared nothing about called me, and every once in a while, I accepted an invitation. On them my indifference worked like an aphrodisiac, Because I didn't want anything, I felt free an jabbered away spinning out all kinds of silliness that seemed only to augment their desire.

And perception is a complex phenomenon. Our brains are not cameras or recording devices. Visual perception is active and shaped by both conscious and unconscious forces. Expectation is crucial to perceptual experience, and what to expect about how the world works is learned, and once something is learned well, it becomes unconscious.