Quotes by Siri Hustvedt

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

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.

We chart delusions through collective agreement.

I was happy without having sought happiness.

I had no friends. Was I happy? I was wildly happy. Sitting on my bed, which took up most of the space in that narrow room, I whispered prayers of thanks that I was really and truly here in New York, beginning another life. I worshipped the place. I feasted on every beautiful inch of it - the crowds, the fruit and vegetable stands, the miles of pavement, the graffiti, even the garbage. All of it sent me into paroxysms of joy. Needless to say, my elevation had an irrational cast to it. Had I not arrived laden with ideas of urban paradise, I might have felt bad losing sleep, might have felt lonely and disoriented, but instead I walked around town like a love-struck idiot, inhaling the difference between there and here.

It is true that I suffered in a difficult and stupid love affair and that I worked at one bad job after another to try to keep myself going. Nevertheless, I remember that time as extraordinary, and I wouldnt trade it for anything. I dont even wish now that I had more money. And had I been asked if I was suffering at the time, I would have said a defiant no.

Walking across campus made me feel sad, and I thought to myself, I wasnt happy there. Then, after reading, we walked past Butler Library. It was dark, but the light inside illuminated the windows. Students were reading and working, and those lit windows gave me a wonderful, weightless feeling. I understood for the first time how happy I had been there - in the library.

We are all dying one by one. We all smell of mortality, and we cant wash it off.

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

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.

Every reader writes the book he or she reads, supplying what isnt there, and that creative invention becomes the book.

Pain is always emotional. Fear and depression keep constant company with chronic hurting.

Dreams are stories made by and for the dreamer, and each dreamer has his own folds to open and knots to untie.

Dreaming is another form of thinking, more concrete, more economical, more visual, and often more emotional than the thoughts of the day, but a thinking through of the day, nevertheless.

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.

Ive come to think of consciousness as a continuum of states, from fully awake cogitation to daydreaming to the altered consciousness of hallucinations and dreams. Still, interpreting dreams can only take place when were awake. I believe meaning is what the mind makes and wants. Its essential to perception and to consciousness in all its forms. But the important meanings of psychotherapy are subjective. Theres a lot of research that confirms that drem content reflects the dreamers emotional conflicts.

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

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.

In order to be accepted, women must compensate for their ambition and strength by being nice. Men dont have to be nearly as much d as women. I do not believe women are natively nicer than men. They may learn that niceness brings rewards and hat names ambition is often punished. They may ingratiate themselves because such behavior is rewarded and a strategy of stealth may lead to better results than being forthright, but even when women are open and direct, they are not always seen or heard.