Lidia Yuknavitch

I just want my stories to be mine.

— Lidia Yuknavitch

I am not alone. Whatever else there was or is, writing is with me.

— Lidia Yuknavitch

In water, like in books—you can leave your life.

— Lidia Yuknavitch

Words carry oceans on their small backs.

— Lidia Yuknavitch

Make up stories until you find one you can live with.

— Lidia Yuknavitch

“We consumer and become exactly what we create. In all times.”

— Lidia Yuknavitch

Laughter can shake you from the delirium of grief

— Lidia Yuknavitch

“People are forever thinking that the unthinkable can't happen.”

— Lidia Yuknavitch

“We are what happens when the seemingly unthinkable celebrity rises to power. Our existence makes my eyes hurt.”

— Lidia Yuknavitch

“We misfits are the ones with the ability to enter grief. Death. Trauma. And emerge.”

— Lidia Yuknavitch

The maternal impulse in animals to protect their young - that kind of instinct and subsequent violence is quite beautiful. Mythic even.

— Lidia Yuknavitch

Underneath the forms of fiction and poetry, you can bet your ass the ground comes from someone's actual life experience.

— Lidia Yuknavitch

“I kiss her. I kiss her and kiss her. I try not to bite her lip. She tastes like vodkahoney.”

— Lidia Yuknavitch

“It dawned on me that we have to breathe and to find reasons to stay alive on our own terms.”

— Lidia Yuknavitch

“You must let it glide on surfaces so you don't make a mess of things”

— Lidia Yuknavitch

“We are what happens when the seemingly unthinkable celebrity rises to power. Our”

— Lidia Yuknavitch

I'm kind of still down with Virg Woolf on this one: "women must kill the aesthetic ideal through which they themselves have…

— Lidia Yuknavitch

In my real life I had to confront the sins of the father, but it's also a symbolic journey - a social,…

— Lidia Yuknavitch

Only when I make movements away from the tribe of indie art and literature. Maybe that's something important for me to keep…

— Lidia Yuknavitch

I might think that equality has been achieved, there is no power relation going on in terms of class, race, or gender,…

— Lidia Yuknavitch

It may be true too that I would not have encountered the most important books and art and ideas of my life…

— Lidia Yuknavitch

“If you have ever fucked up in your life, or if the great river of sadness that runs through us all has…

— Lidia Yuknavitch

“I 'passed' in every sphere of regular life I entered, but I entered those spheres less and less, and spent more and…

— Lidia Yuknavitch

Fiction and poetry expose intimate things from a person's life every bit as much as memoir does, and sometimes more. I don't…

— Lidia Yuknavitch

If I hadn't spent a big chunk of time in academia I might not have the depth of consciousness I do about…

— Lidia Yuknavitch

Certainly I'm participating in an already established and awesome tradition, but it's a tradition that sort of shoots up and through the…

— Lidia Yuknavitch

“There's a girl calm people don't know about. It's a girl teen standstill. A motionless peace. It doesn't come from anywhere but…

— Lidia Yuknavitch

I first read Freud's famous case study on hysteria based on his client Ida Bauer when I was in my twenties. It…

— Lidia Yuknavitch

I do have one regret though. I wish Kathy Acker was still alive. I wish I could go swim with her again.…

— Lidia Yuknavitch

I'm in love with language again because Luke B. Goebel is not afraid to take us back through the gullet of loss…

— Lidia Yuknavitch

Most of my formal choices are a combination of everything I learned about form - semiotics, linguistics, and the history of style…

— Lidia Yuknavitch

I don't have any problem understanding why people flunk out of college or quit their jobs or cheat on each other or…

— Lidia Yuknavitch

“That's about when it happens. Coming down the escalator from one Nord floor to the next we see Little Teena has commandeered…

— Lidia Yuknavitch

“Fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, lemme tell you. Those are big years. Everybody always thinks of it as a time of adolescence—just getting…

— Lidia Yuknavitch

“In the film Death and the Maiden, there is a point during which Sigourney Weaver has duct-taped Ben Kingsley to a chair…

— Lidia Yuknavitch

“And if there is water there let it be from a river. And if there is peace let it be from silence…

— Lidia Yuknavitch

“This man was gorgeous. I'm mentioning this because women live their lives secretly waiting for their lives to become movies. We act…

— Lidia Yuknavitch

“I am a woman who talks to herself and lies.”

— Lidia Yuknavitch

I drop to the curb like childhood leaving a body.

— Lidia Yuknavitch

Sometimes saviors look different than you thought they would.

— Lidia Yuknavitch