Siri Hustvedt Quotes

Quotes about:

• Every painting is always two paintings: The one you see, and the one you remember.

  Siri Hustvedt

  Two, Painting, Remember

  Siri Hustvedt (2006). “Mysteries of the Rectangle: Essays on Painting”, p.12, Princeton Architectural Press

  52 Copy quote

• 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.

  Siri Hustvedt

  Book, Together, Collaboration

  Siri Hustvedt (2011). “The Summer Without Men”, p.72, Hachette UK

  29 Copy quote

• Writing fiction is like remembering what never happened.

  Siri Hustvedt

  Writing, Fiction, Remember

  Siri Hustvedt (2007). “A Plea for Eros: Essays”, p.41, Macmillan

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  Siri Hustvedt

  Body, Language, Sometimes

  24 Copy quote

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

  Siri Hustvedt

  Reflection, Past, Form

  Siri Hustvedt (2011). “The Summer Without Men: A Novel”, p.94, Macmillan

  26 Copy quote

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

  Siri Hustvedt

  Reading, Perception, Mind

  Siri Hustvedt (2012). “Living, Thinking, Looking: Essays”, p.133, Macmillan

  5 Copy quote

• We lose ourselves in stories; that's the beauty of literary art.

  Siri Hustvedt

  Art, Stories, Literary Art

  Source: www.harpersbazaar.com

  4 Copy quote

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

  Siri Hustvedt

  Life Changing, Book, Heart

  Siri Hustvedt (2012). “Living, Thinking, Looking: Essays”, p.63, Macmillan

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  Siri Hustvedt

  Past, Amnesia, Slips

  Siri Hustvedt (2011). “The Summer Without Men: A Novel”, p.33, Macmillan

  4 Copy quote

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

  Siri Hustvedt

  Reading, Doors, Imbibing

  9 Copy quote

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

  Siri Hustvedt

  Dream, Library, Factories

  4 Copy quote

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

  Siri Hustvedt

  Dream, Stories, Made

  Siri Hustvedt (2010). “The Shaking Woman or A History of My Nerves”, p.137, Macmillan

  19 Copy quote

• The faculty of memory cannot be separated from the imagination. They go hand in hand. To one degree or another, we all invent our personal pasts. And for most of us those pasts are built from emotionally colored memories.

  Siri Hustvedt

  Memories, Past, Hands

  Siri Hustvedt (2010). “The Shaking Woman or A History of My Nerves”, p.112, Macmillan

  9 Copy quote

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

  Siri Hustvedt

  Healthy, Together, Cracks

  Siri Hustvedt (2008). “The Sorrows of an American: A Novel”, p.139, Macmillan

  14 Copy quote

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

  Siri Hustvedt

  Memories, Syntax, Coherence

  14 Copy quote

• Our brain and our whole nervous system and our whole body are only created in relation to other people and to the environment. So what we have here is an enormously complex notion of both consciousness and unconsciousness. That's why these models get very difficult, because you can't reduce our subjective and intersubjective experience to neural reductions.

  Siri Hustvedt

  People, Brain, Consciousness

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

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

  Siri Hustvedt

  Stars, Sea, Rose

  Siri Hustvedt (2011). “The Summer Without Men: A Novel”, p.84, Macmillan

  9 Copy quote

• 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.

  Siri Hustvedt

  Journey, Interesting, Speech

  4 Copy quote

• Human beings are repetitive animals. All meaning is generated through repetition.

  Siri Hustvedt

  Animal, Repetition, Humans

  Siri Hustvedt (2010). “The Shaking Woman or A History of My Nerves”, p.182, Macmillan

  7 Copy quote

• I think that it's important for people to read philosophy and literature is not because I think everyone should be a well-rounded human being, but because it will help you think better about what you are doing.

  Siri Hustvedt

  Philosophy, Thinking, People

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• Memory changes as a person matures.

  Siri Hustvedt

  Memories, Persons

  9 Copy quote

• We sometimes imagine we want what we don't really want.

  Siri Hustvedt

  Want, Sometimes, Imagine

  Siri Hustvedt (2012). “Living, Thinking, Looking: Essays”, p.19, Macmillan

  6 Copy quote

• We read each other through our eyes, and anatomically they are an extension of our brains. When we catch someone's eye, we look into a mind.

  Siri Hustvedt

  Eye, Brain, Mind

  Siri Hustvedt (2008). “The Sorrows of an American: A Novel”, p.36, Macmillan

  7 Copy quote

• Ture 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.

  Siri Hustvedt

  Stories, Vantage Point

  Siri Hustvedt (2010). “The Shaking Woman or A History of My Nerves”, p.38, Macmillan

  9 Copy quote

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

  Siri Hustvedt

  Hurt, Pain, Emotional

  Siri Hustvedt (2010). “The Shaking Woman or A History of My Nerves”, p.179, Macmillan

  13 Copy quote

Page 1 of 3

← Prev

1

2

3

Next →

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin