Quotes About Otherness

But in either instance, if it has intelligence, that intelligence is far different from our own. It creates out of our ecosystem a new world, whose processes and aims are utterly alien—one that works through supreme acts of mirroring, and by remaining hidden in so many other ways, all without surrendering the foundations of its otherness as it becomes what it encounters.

She'd let me in, and for the first time, I actually wanted to do the same, to tell someone the truth. That I wasn't normal. That I wasn't human.

The man out on the street was something without a human nature or a personality of its own. He was on a stage. The street was another world.

The "normal" family is, after all, the source of what the Devil enjoys most: anxiety, mental illness, violence, evil thoughts, fear, and social unrest. What the devil hates are attempts to escape the quotidian horror of ordinariness. These escapes into art, into otherness, must give him headaches because they might, just might, lead to innocence.

America's "otherness" is not accepted as such by Europeans or even considered under the rubric of that motto "Other countries—other customs." On the contrary: The American "other" serves the purpose of turning America on the whole into a laughingstock, of mocking, ridiculing, and sanctimoniously instructing America, but never viewing it as an equal on the same plane with Europe.

Well, the first thing is that I love monsters, I identify with monsters.

I felt like I might as well have been living in another part of the solar system.

The Aelfinn are not evil, but they are so different from humanity they may as well be so. They are not to be trusted. —Birgitte Silverbow

One of my favorite things about hanging out with the monsters is the healing. Straight humans seemed to get killed on me a lot. Monsters survived. Let's hear it for the monsters.

Is it any wonder that I absent-mindedly take the entrance marked Aliens Only whenever I enter?

The main thing about aliens is that they are alien. They feel no responsibility for fulfilling any of your expectations. (Dark City Lights)

People feared what they did not understand, and they without a doubt did not understand her. Those who believed they did least of all. She was something new.

The desire to demonize others is based on the ontological uncertainties.

He did not put his feelings down to simple xenophobia. Basically, he hadn't expected the alien to be so completely alien.

This renewed politics of otherness not only allowed entire categories of poor whites to develop a powerful sense of racial belonging, but also allowed entire categories of erstwhile nonwhite immigrants (the Irish are the most prominent example) to become white.

No matter where and when you meet him you feel that he has come from some place-no matter from what place he has come-some country that he has devoured rather than resided in, some secret land that he has been nourished on but cannot inherit, for the Jew seems to be everythere from nowhere.

At the heart of all beauty lies something inhuman.

Die Haltung dem Fremden gegenüber ist von der Haltung sich selbst gegenüber nicht zu trennen. Solange ich einen Mitmenschen als grundsätzlich verschieden von mir erfahre, solange er für mich ein Fremder ist, bleibe ich auch mir selber ein Fremder.

I am aware that I, without realizing it, have lost my feelings -- I don't belong here anymore, I live in an alien world. I prefer to be left alone, not disturbed by anybody. They talk too much - I can't relate to them -- they are only busy with the superficial things

Neutralizing each other's complexity affords us a kind of manageable otherness.

O]ur willingness to engage that mystery keeps desire alive. Faced with the irrefutable otherness of our partner, we can respond with fear or with curiosity. We can try to reduce the other to a knowable entity, or we can embrace her persistent mystery. [...] Eroticism resides in the ambiguous space between anxiety and fascination. We remain interested in our partners; they delight us, and we're drawn to them.

Sometimes, when we seek the gaze of another, it isn't our partner we are turning away from, but the person we have become. We are not looking for another lover so much as another version of ourselves. Mexican essayist Octavio Paz describes eroticism as a thirst for otherness. So often, the most intoxicating other that people discover in the affair is not a new partner; it's a new self.

You, the Elder Folk, like to say that hatred is alien to you, that it is a feeling known only to humans. But it is not true. You know what hatred is and are capable of hating, you merely evince it a little differently, more wisely and less savagely. But because of that it may be more cruel.

People like to invent monsters and monstrosities. Then they seem less monstrous themselves.