Siri Hustvedt

Dreams are stories made by and for the dreamer...

— Siri Hustvedt

There are no rules in art.

— Siri Hustvedt

Every mental state is also physical.

— Siri Hustvedt

Men generally do not see women as competition.

— Siri Hustvedt

“short-lived passions I pursued on my own terms.”

— Siri Hustvedt

We chart delusions through collective agreement.

— Siri Hustvedt

“Art is not about art. Art is about life.   L. B.”

— Siri Hustvedt

“Only the unprotected self can feel joy.”

— Siri Hustvedt

“the impersonal and the personal are always connected.”

— Siri Hustvedt

Every one of us is prone to implicit sexual prejudices, including women.

— Siri Hustvedt

When I don't get enough sleep, I am cranky, vulnerable to headaches, and my concentration is poor.

— Siri Hustvedt

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

— Siri Hustvedt

“Through experience most adults lose that intense feeling of the unfamiliar - of being not home.”

— Siri Hustvedt

I published my first poem in 'The Paris Review' in 1980.

— Siri Hustvedt

Rage has such focus. It can't go on forever, but it's invigorating.

— Siri Hustvedt

Sigmund Freud was very much a creature of his time. He did not 'invent' the unconscious.

— Siri Hustvedt

“but the story's interest lies in my struggle over semantics and the moral resonance of interpreting the meaning of a word.”

— Siri Hustvedt

Being a mother is complicated because its not just a paternal culture making demands on you; its those internal demands and expectations…

— Siri Hustvedt

“It appears that time has turned that young woman, who imagined herself a romantic heroine, into something of a comic character, but…

— Siri Hustvedt

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

I watched 'Holiday' in college, and that was when I had my first fantasy of being Katharine Hepburn, standing at the top…

— Siri Hustvedt

“we imagine ourselves as the other person will see us, mirroring our own desire in them, and most of what we do…

— Siri Hustvedt

Even in fiction, I feel rigorous honesty applies. It doesn't apply to facts; it applies to what I think of as not…

— Siri Hustvedt

“Everybody knows what a dry text is - one that has left out feeling, one that bores you stiff because if doesn't…

— Siri Hustvedt

Like countless first-year medical students, immersed in the symptoms of one disease after another, I am alert to the tingles and pangs,…

— Siri Hustvedt

As one of four daughters, I grew up with an imaginary brother - wondering what it would have been like if one…

— Siri Hustvedt

“The tangible and intangible collide to cast a spell. But can a person or thing ever be stripped naked? Can we ever…

— Siri Hustvedt

Ego, id, and superego are terms familiar to all, but for many years, Freud's psychoanalytic theory has thrived in English departments around…

— Siri Hustvedt

The logic: Reading is a private pursuit, one that often takes place behind closed doors. A young lady might retreat with a…

— Siri Hustvedt

“We project our feelings onto other people, but there is always a dynamic that creates those inventions. The fantasies are made between…

— Siri Hustvedt

I bought myself a rubber brain, familiarized myself with its many parts, listened intently, and read more. In fact, I read obsessively,…

— Siri Hustvedt

“I read the stories I've been told in my own way and make a narrative of them. Narrative is a chain of…

— Siri Hustvedt

“The transience of human feeling is nothing short of ludicrous. My mercurial fluctuations in the course of a single evening made me…

— Siri Hustvedt

“In the evening, she took a sleeping pill. As the months passed, she became much kinder to me than she had been,…

— Siri Hustvedt

“I had no friends. Was I happy? I was wildly happy. Sitting on my bed, which took up most of the space…

— Siri Hustvedt

The recollections of an older man are different from those of a younger man. What seemed vital at forty may lose its…

— Siri Hustvedt

“the idea of "extension" makes sense to me because art and the world can't be as easily divided as we sometimes imagine.…

— Siri Hustvedt

“I've come to think of consciousness as a continuum of states, from fully awake cogitation to daydreaming to the altered consciousness of…

— Siri Hustvedt

“There were many books inside me by then, and yet these jolted me with their originality. I met the man before I…

— Siri Hustvedt

“A powerfully imagined event can evoke the same emotions as a real event. Few artists would contradict this, and yet there no…

— Siri Hustvedt