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7abc5ef
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Is it true that the literary world is mined with hatred, a battlefield rimmed with snipers where jealousies and rivalries are always being played out? asked the NPR interviewer of the distinguished author. Who allowed that it was. There's a lot of envy and enmity, the author said. And he tried to explain: It's like a sinking raft that too many people are trying to get onto. So any push you can deliver makes the raft a little higher for you...
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Sigrid Nunez |
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dc131d2
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Death the only god who must come when he's called
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Sigrid Nunez |
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9e184bb
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It is widely believed that although animals don't know that one day they'll die, many of them do know when they're actually dying. So at what point does a dying animal become aware of what's happening? Could it possibly be a long time before? And how do animals respond to aging? Are they completely puzzled, or do they somehow intuit what the signs mean? Are these foolish questions? I acknowledge that they are. And yet they preoccupy me.
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Sigrid Nunez |
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22394da
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Is this the madness at the heart of it? Do I believe that if I am good to him, if I act selflessly and make sacrifices for him, do I believe that if I love Apollo - beautiful, aging, melancholy Apollo - I will wake one morning to find him gone and you in his place, back from the land of the dead?
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Sigrid Nunez |
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ba6703d
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Another memory. She walks into the kitchen, sits down at the kitchen counter with me, and says, "I just got a very interesting phone call. It was some guy who said he was doing a survey for the Maidenform company, and would I take a minute to answer a couple of questions. So I said sure. And then he started asking things like, was I wearing a bra right now, what kind of bra was it, and what size was it--" "You mean an obscene phone call." S..
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Sigrid Nunez |
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4963c70
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If I bring him home though, I swear he'll spend the rest of his life waiting by the door. And he deserves better than that, don't you think?' Yes, I think, my heart breaking.
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death
dogs
love
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Sigrid Nunez |
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d0d8970
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I believe we must all retain, throughout our whole lives, a powerful memory of those early moments of life, a time when we were as much animal as human, the overwhelming feelings of helplessness and vulnerability and mute fear, and the yearning for the protection that our instinct tells us is there, if we could just cry loudly enough. Innocence is something we humans pass through and leave behind, unable to return. But animals live and die ..
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Sigrid Nunez |
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32701e7
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I believe that fear of being a failure plays a large part in goading many women who are ambivalent about motherhood into maternity. That, and the fear of missing out,
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Sigrid Nunez |
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236eb4e
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At a certain point in her life, she realizes it is not so much that she wants to have a child as that she does not want not to have a child, or not to have had a child'" (109)."
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Sigrid Nunez |
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7c8dcef
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Any writer worth his salt knows that only a small proportion of literature does more than partly compensate people for the damage they have suffered in learning to read. Rebecca West.
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Sigrid Nunez |
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aa5ee47
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Rather than, say, Toni Morrison, who called basing a character on a real person an infringement of copyright. A person owns his life, she says. It's not for another to use it for fiction.
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Sigrid Nunez |
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f359494
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Socrates to Phaedrus: "I'm a lover of learning, and trees and open country won't teach me anything.")"
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Sigrid Nunez |
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24aa27f
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Once, when we were walking together on a campus outside the city, a chipmunk zipped across our path and dove into a hole at the base of an oak tree. "Oh, look at that," she said. "Just like Walt Disney."
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Sigrid Nunez |
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1200212
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Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.
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Sigrid Nunez |
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091e6e9
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You write a thing down because you're hoping to get a hold on it. You write about experiences partly to understand what they mean, partly not to lose them to time. To oblivion.
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Sigrid Nunez |
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b476b96
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It's not uncommon to wish to have known what a person you've come to love was like before you met them. It hurts, almost, not to have known what a beloved was like as a child. I have felt this way about every man I've ever been in love with, and about many close friends as well, and now it's how I feel about Apollo.
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Sigrid Nunez |
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07363fe
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Cell phones do not belong in fiction, an editor once scolded in the margin of one of my manuscripts, and ever since - more than two decades now - I have wondered at the disconnect between tech-filled life and techless story.
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Sigrid Nunez |
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e63d950
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What do dogs think when they see someone cry? Bred to be comforters, they comfort us. But how puzzling human unhappiness must be to them. We who can fill our dishes any time and with as much food as we like, who can go outside whenever we wish, and run free - we who have no master constantly needling to be pleased, or obeyed.
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Sigrid Nunez |
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92bc582
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They hold each other tightly for a few moments as the dog, a miniature dachshund, barks and leaps at them.
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Sigrid Nunez |
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74be89c
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There's a certain kind of person who, having read this far, is anxiously wondering: Does something bad happen to the dog?
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Sigrid Nunez |
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5d206c0
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Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring.
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Sigrid Nunez |
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47ed61f
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Beware irony, ignore criticism, look to what is simple, study the small and humble things of the world, do what is difficult precisely because it is difficult, do not search for answers but rather love the questions, do not run away from sadness or depression for these might be the very conditions necessary to your work. Seek solitude, above all seek solitude." "
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Sigrid Nunez |
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2158b32
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Why do I think you did it? Because you were trapped upside down in a tankful of water. Because you were weak and in pain. Because you were tired of fighting.
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suicide
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Sigrid Nunez |
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3a69eda
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The problem of self-loathing isn't new. What's new is the idea that it's the people with the history of greatest injustice who have the greatest right to be heard, and that the time has come for the arts not just to make room for them but to be dominated by them.
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representation
writers
writing
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Sigrid Nunez |
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4c86833
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LOL-inspiring thought: Wouldn't it
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Sigrid Nunez |
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a632b39
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It's always good to start off anything by breaking a rule.
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Sigrid Nunez |
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88ac866
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Graffiti on Philosophy Hall: The examined life ain't worth it either.
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Sigrid Nunez |
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bca3173
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Anthropomorphism, I've decided, is inescapable, and though I might try to hide it I no longer fight it.
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dogs
grieving
love
suicide
writing
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Sigrid Nunez |
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a808da8
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I Am the Architect of My Own Destiny,
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Sigrid Nunez |
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40834d8
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Idyllic is how Kundera describes human relationships with animals. Idyllic because animals were not expelled with us from Paradise. There they remain, untroubled by such complications as the separation of body and soul, and it's through our love and friendship with them that we are able to reconnect to Paradise, albeit by just a thread.
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Sigrid Nunez |
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a2a2ddb
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Do what is difficult because it is difficult. Do what will cost you the most. Who
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Sigrid Nunez |
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425be4e
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Do what is difficult because it is difficult. Do what will cost you the most. Who these people?
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Sigrid Nunez |
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f902b95
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barbarity
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Sigrid Nunez |
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ac8b0a1
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I like that, well before T.S. Eliot expressed himself on the matter, Samuel Butler stated that the severest test of the imagination was naming a cat.
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imagination
names
naming
pets
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Sigrid Nunez |
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cecb080
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Rather than write about what you know, you told us, write about what you Assume that you know very little and that you'll never know much until you learn how to see.
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knowledge
observation
seeing
writing
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Sigrid Nunez |
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f6a0f8c
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I believe the intensity of the pity you feel for an animal has to do with how it evokes pity for yourself.... Innocence is something we humans pass through and leave behind, unable to return. But animals live and die in that state, and seeing innocence violated in the form of cruelty to a mere duck can seem like the most barbaric act in the world.
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animals
barbarism
cruelty
cruelty-to-animals
innocence
pity
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Sigrid Nunez |
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daaa506
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What we miss - what we lose and what we mourn - isn't it this that makes us who, deep down, we truly are.
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Sigrid Nunez |
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c7191ab
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What exactly did Simone Weil mean when she said, When you have to make a decision in life, about what you should do, do what will cost you the most. Do what is difficult because it is difficult. Do what will cost you the most. Who these people?
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decisions
difficulty
implications
life
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Sigrid Nunez |
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9d25602
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I like that the Aborigines say dogs make people human
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dogs
pets
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Sigrid Nunez |
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9f7dce0
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To draw me out, the therapist asks what I did for the holidays. When I tell him he says gently (he says everything gently), Sounds like that's one of the ways your loss has affected you: not wanting to be with other people. Hating to be with other people, I don't say. Terrified of being with other people.
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grief
isolation
loneliness
loss
mourning
solitude
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Sigrid Nunez |
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604bcc4
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You caught some flak for questioning whether there could really be such a thing as a flaneuse. You didn't think it was possible for a woman to wander the streets in the same spirit and manner as a man. A female pedestrian was subject to constant disruptions: stares, comments, catcalls, gropes. A woman was raised to be always on guard: Was this guy walking too close? Was that guy following her? How, then, could she ever relax enough to exper..
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Sigrid Nunez |
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844ad29
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I've known plenty of women who brace themselves whenever they leave the house, even a few who try to avoid leaving the house. Of course, a woman has only to wait until she's a certain age, when she becomes invisible, and--problem solved.
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Sigrid Nunez |
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7ed737e
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I confess to sudden rages. Walking in Midtown, rush hour's peak, people streaming in both directions, I find myself seething, ready to kill. Who are all these fucking people, and how is it fair, how is it even possible that all of them, these perfectly ordinary people, should be alive, when --
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death
grief
life
loss
mourning
rage
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Sigrid Nunez |
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a78cdca
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A friend of mine who is working on a memoir says, I hate the idea of writing as some kind of catharsis, because it seems like that can't possibly produce a good book. You cannot hope to console yourself for your grief by writing, warns Natalia Ginzburg. Turn then to Isak Dinesen, who believed that you could make any sorrow bearable by putting into into a story or telling a story about it.
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grief
loss
sorrow
writing
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Sigrid Nunez |