Reading is perception as translation. The inert signs of an alphabet become living meanings in the mind. — Siri Hustvedt Copy Share Image
“The advice is a call to empathy, the ultimate act of the imagination, and the true ground of all fiction.” — Siri Hustvedt Copy Share Image
Reading is a private pursuit; one that takes place behind closed doors. — Siri Hustvedt Copy Share Image
Great books are the ones that are urgent, life-changing, the ones that crack open the reader’s skull and heart. — Siri Hustvedt Copy Share Image
“Every reader writes the book he or she reads, supplying what isn't there, and that creative invention becomes the book.” — Siri Hustvedt Copy Share Image
There is this assumption that much of what I write is about my life, and that simply is not true. — Siri Hustvedt Copy Share Image
I am married to a writer, and this - writing - is an odd enterprise. It's something we both support very strongly. — Siri Hustvedt Copy Share Image
Good books, written by men or women, are ones in which you lose consciousness of the person writing the sentences. — Siri Hustvedt Copy Share Image
Henry Miller is a famous writer whose work has fallen out of fashion, but I strongly recommend that readers who don't know… — Siri Hustvedt Copy Share Image
It's not as if I've been unlucky. My books have been published and reviewed. I haven't lived through terrible literary suffering! — Siri Hustvedt Copy Share Image
I bought myself a rubber brain, familiarized myself with its many parts, listened intently, and read more. In fact, I read obsessively,… — Siri Hustvedt Copy Share Image
“and although the young writer never met his literary mentor, the spiritual connection between the two writers would never be dissolved.” — Siri Hustvedt Copy Share Image
A book is a collaboration between the one who reads and what is read and, at its best, that coming together is… — Siri Hustvedt Copy Share Image
“I am afraid of writing, too, because when I write I am always moving toward the unarticulated, the dangerous, the place where… — Siri Hustvedt Copy Share Image
I think that it's important for people to read philosophy and literature is not because I think everyone should be a well-rounded… — Siri Hustvedt Copy Share Image
The history of fiction is about family - an inexhaustible subject for literature. We are creatures driven by emotions that are on… — Siri Hustvedt Copy Share Image
“I loved it so much I was sorry to finish it. I closed the book and shocked myself by thinking, This is… — Siri Hustvedt Copy Share Image
I don't want the words to be naked the way they are in faxes or in the computer. I want them to… — Siri Hustvedt Copy Share Image
“Walking across campus made me feel sad, and I thought to myself, I wasn't happy there. Then, after reading, we walked past… — Siri Hustvedt Copy Share Image
“In college I retreated to the library. I have always loved libraries - the quiet, the smell, the expectation of imminent discovery.… — Siri Hustvedt Copy Share Image
“Maybe the world isn't enough, or maybe the distinction between the world and fiction is not so clear. Fiction is made from… — Siri Hustvedt Copy Share Image
“It may be that I link every library to that first one - to my early childhood experience of drawing on the… — Siri Hustvedt Copy Share Image
Novelists embody plural selves all the time. What are characters, after all, if not other selves? — Siri Hustvedt Copy Share Image
“Writing novels means being plural, being divided among your creatures and suffering with them.” — Siri Hustvedt Copy Share Image
I knew I wanted to be a writer at 13. Before that, I told everyone I was going to be an artist. — Siri Hustvedt Copy Share Image
Writing isn't a job so much as a compulsion. I've been writing since I was very young because for some strange reason,… — Siri Hustvedt Copy Share Image
“Again, I don't fully understand my emotion response to the library or trust it. It was the site of a series of… — Siri Hustvedt Copy Share Image
“but the fact is that New York is as much a myth as a place, and because we all participate in that… — Siri Hustvedt Copy Share Image
I am married to a writer, and this - writing - is an odd enterprise. It's something we both support very strongly. — Siri Hustvedt Copy Share
With almost no exceptions, art by men is much more expensive than art by women. Even great women artists, like Louise Bourgeois and Lee… — Siri Hustvedt Copy Share
I love the little garden in the back of my family's brownstone in Brooklyn. Digging out there in the dirt is a joy for… — Siri Hustvedt Copy Share
I watched 'Holiday' in college, and that was when I had my first fantasy of being Katharine Hepburn, standing at the top of the… — Siri Hustvedt Copy Share
When I don't get enough sleep, I am cranky, vulnerable to headaches, and my concentration is poor. — Siri Hustvedt Copy Share
“Transformation of the self are related to where you are, and identity Is dependent on others.” — Siri Hustvedt Copy Share
There's a phenomenology of being sick, one that depends on temperament, personal history, and the culture which we live in. — Siri Hustvedt Copy Share
The faculty of memory cannot be separated from the imagination. They go hand in hand. To one degree or another, we all invent our… — Siri Hustvedt Copy Share
“Looking is part of love, but what you see when you look is anybody's guess.” — Siri Hustvedt Copy Share
Every sickness has an alien quality, a feeling of invasion and loss of control that is evident in the language we use about it. — Siri Hustvedt Copy Share
“The outside also becomes us. A human being is born an unfinished organism and as the person develops experience with others becomes a physical… — Siri Hustvedt Copy Share
I am an American, but a sense of otherness was part of my growing up. I spoke Norwegian before I spoke English. My mother… — Siri Hustvedt Copy Share
When I was an impoverished graduate student, I would sometimes spend $20 or $30 on a T-shirt or accessory I didn't need or even… — Siri Hustvedt Copy Share
