Quotes from Sigrid Nunez

But that's what age is, isn't it? Slo-mo castration.

Cole hopes to go around the world one day. One of his favorite words is explorer. During the pandemic people weren't allowed to travel anywhere unless they absolutely had to, and even now it's not the way it was before. There aren't as many airplanes. There aren't as many buses or trains, and there aren't as many cars on the highways.

She sometimes has panic attacks before class. Hence the meditation, sometimes supplemented with benzodiazepine.

I went in and sat down. I had a moment's panic because the bartender, a young man with the kind of ornate tattoos and facial hair that make me think of a conversation piece, ignored me, even though he was not just then attending to anyone else. I took out my phone, that reliable prop, and spent a few moments tickling it.

I was not the only one who made the mistake of thinking that, because it was something you talked about a lot, it was something you wouldn't do. And after all, you were not the unhappiest person we knew. You were not the most depressed (think of G, of D, or T-R). You were not even - strange as it now sounds to say - the most suicidal. Because of the timing, so near the start of the year, it was possible to think that it had been a resolution.

characters. When I was teaching I noticed that, each year, my students' opinion of writers seemed to have sunk a little lower. But what does it mean when people who want to be writers see writers in such a negative light? Can you imagine a dance student feeling that way about the New York City Ballet? Or young athletes despising Olympic champions?

A riddle: If it was true what she said, that she expected nothing from her husband, why was she forever seething with disappointment?

Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring.

The wish to please, to charm—the desire to provoke desire—runs deep in me and seems to have been there from the beginning.

You posted an essay, "How to Be a Flâneur," on the custom of urban strolling and loitering and its place in literary culture. You caught some flak for questioning whether there could really be such a thing as a flâneuse. You didn't think it was possible for a woman to wander the streets in the same spirit and manner as a man. A female pedestrian was subject to constant disruptions: stares

I didn't think you were wrong about any of this. I've known plenty of women who brace themselves whenever they leave the house, even a few who try to avoid leaving the house. Of course, a woman has only to wait until she's a certain age, when she becomes invisible, and—problem solved.

Stevie Smith calling Death the only god who must come when he's called tickled you pink, as did the various ways people have said that were it not for suicide they could not go on.

Since I first heard about your death, haven't I often felt like someone living with one foot in madness. Early on, there were times when I would find myself somewhere without remembering how I got there, when I'd leave home on some errand only to forget what it was.

But there lingers over all the fog of the unreal. At times it's as if I truly am in a fairy tale.

Unlike when a young person commits suicide, which could never be anything but a mistake.

Nabokov's syllogism. Other men die; but I am not another; therefore I'll not die.

Beware irony, ignore criticism, look to what is simple, study the small and humble things of the world, do what is difficult precisely because it is difficult, do not search for answers but rather love the questions, do not run away from sadness or depression for these might be the very conditions necessary to your work. Seek solitude, above all seek solitude. ?

Youth burdened with the full knowledge of how sad and painful aging is I would not call youth at all

The only animal that commits suicide is also the only animal that weeps.

David Lurie is so appalled by his degraded state—no longer sexually attractive but still squirming with lust—that he finds himself musing about actual castration, the possibility that one might get a doctor to do it, or even, with the help of a textbook, do it oneself. For would that really be any more disgusting than the antics of a dirty old man? Instead, he forces himself on one of his students, a cannonball dive into disgrace that will be his undoing.

Do what is difficult because it is difficult. Do what will cost you the most. Who were these people?

Why do I think you did it? Because you were trapped upside down in a tankful of water. Because you were weak and in pain. Because you were tired of fighting.

Understood: language would end up falsifying everything, as language always does.

Let's face it, this is America. Anything that's bad for business, people don't want to hear. When it comes to money or doing the right thing, most people are going to choose money. Close up shop for months till they can make a new vaccine? How many businesses would still be alive after that?