Siri Hustvedt

“the spectator is the true vanishing point”

— Siri Hustvedt

“I was happy without having sought happiness.”

— Siri Hustvedt

I garden. It's very relaxing to me.

— Siri Hustvedt

Memory changes as a person matures.

— Siri Hustvedt

“nonsense can also be real”

— Siri Hustvedt

Writing fiction is like remembering what never happened.

— Siri Hustvedt

“American feminism has always had a puritanical strain, an imposed blindness to erotic truth.”

— Siri Hustvedt

“Are not dreams as much a part of living as waking life is?”

— Siri Hustvedt

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

— Siri Hustvedt

I am convinced that during bouts of insomnia, I have sometimes slept without knowing it.

— Siri Hustvedt

“The history of art is full of women lying around naked for erotic consumption by men.”

— Siri Hustvedt

Having children is one of the most passionate and involving bits of business in human life.

— Siri Hustvedt

There is this assumption that much of what I write is about my life, and that simply is not true.

— Siri Hustvedt

“If not violently overthrown, expectation can have a power in itself, can invest a place with what literally isn't there.”

— Siri Hustvedt

“My father once asked me if I knew where yonder was. I said I thought yonder was another word for there. He…

— Siri Hustvedt

“Whether people are besieged by a chemical imbalance or thrown into a panic or depression by a wrenching loss, their inconsistencies also…

— Siri Hustvedt

Flashbacks rarely involve language. Mine certainly didn't. They were visual, motor, and sensory, and they took place in a relentless, horrifying present.

— Siri Hustvedt

“I am fascinated that no one I have read seems to have noticed that the literature on Picasso continually turns grown-up women…

— Siri Hustvedt

Every sickness has an alien quality, a feeling of invasion and loss of control that is evident in the language we use…

— Siri Hustvedt

I was 13 when I had my first bout of insomnia. My family was in Reykjavik, Iceland, for the summer, and day…

— Siri Hustvedt

“Feminism was good for me, as were any number of causes, but as I developed as a thinking person, the truisms and…

— Siri Hustvedt

Our brain and our whole nervous system and our whole body are only created in relation to other people and to the…

— Siri Hustvedt

“Gatsby's ghost may have haunted me, because even in high school I knew that promise lay in the East, particularly in New…

— Siri Hustvedt

My feeling is, when you are writing an essay, you don't make anything up. This may be a very Protestant notion, and…

— Siri Hustvedt

Perception plays a vital role in the diagnosis of bipolar illness. Symptoms are perceived through the categories of psychiatric medicine at a…

— Siri Hustvedt

No matter how brilliant or accomplished they are, there is something emasculating for men in being pitted against a woman. It is…

— Siri Hustvedt

“Through a story that delineates the power of words to obfuscate, exploit, and distort human reality, Henry James offers his own nuanced,…

— Siri Hustvedt

“The man was heavy with life. So often it’s lightness that we admire. Those people who appear weightless and unburdened, who hover…

— Siri Hustvedt

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

“We must all allow ourselves the fantasy of projection from time to time, a chance to clothe ourselves in the imaginary gowns…

— Siri Hustvedt

“His experience of the world and his empathy for other people produced a body of work that adamantly refused ready categories, received…

— Siri Hustvedt

“When I say my wound became political in the years that followed, I don't mean that my involvement in the anti-war movement…

— Siri Hustvedt

“In an age when designer labels and celebrity names are used to sell everything from cars to lipstick, when meaningless slogans and…

— Siri Hustvedt

“In order to be accepted, women must compensate for their ambition and strength by being nice. Men don't have to be nearly…

— Siri Hustvedt

“It encapsulates so neatly the lesson of expectation and reality that it could serve as a parable. The fact that tomatoes are…

— Siri Hustvedt

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

“The truth is that what fascinates me is not so much being in a place as not being there: how places live…

— Siri Hustvedt

The old story is true:Women have to be less emotional than men.

— Siri Hustvedt

The relationship between the imagined and the real is more complicated than people imagine.

— Siri Hustvedt

“We are all dying one by one. We all smell of mortality, and we can't wash it off.”

— Siri Hustvedt