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"I read the stories I've been told in my own way and make a narrative of them. Narrative is a chain of links, and I link furiously, merrily hurdling over holes, gaps, and secrets. Nevertheless, I try to remind myself that the holes are there. They are always there, not only in the lives of others but in my own life as well."
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"I read the stories I've been told in my own way and make a narrative of them. Narrative is a chain of links, and I link furiously, merrily hurdling over holes, gaps, and secrets. Nevertheless, I try to remind myself that the holes are there. They are always there, not only in the lives of others but in my own life as well."

"The outside world might have finally turned into autumn, but inside the Waverley house it still smelled of summer. It was lemon verbena day, so the house was filled with a sweet - tart that conjured images of picnic blankets and white clouds like true - love hearts."

"The scenario where the sprawling anti-hero gets his comeuppance and the champion walks off into the sunset with his arm around the prize, usually a woman, is a pleasing one. This media personification of what a hero is all about used to be the common norm. Examining past events can confirm this convoluted outlook that sees the baddie being portrayed as some sort of evil manifestation sent to cause havoc by any means possible."

"Relaxation is, a state between waking and sleeping, where the body is completely still and the mind is allowed to flow freely from one thought to another, or alternately, a state in which the mind becomes inadvertently calm."

"People naturally impose a narrative story-line upon their experiences. Autobiographical writing allows a person to cast their experiences into a narrative thread and organize their thoughts based not upon conjecture but with applied reason."

"Naughty John, Naughty John, does his work with his apron on. Cuts your throat and takes your bones, sells 'em off for a coupla stones."

"It's also possible to have two third person singular points of view, as represented by two characters through whose eyes the story is told in alternating chapters, say."
Explore more quotes by Siri Hustvedt


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


"There's a phenomenology of being sick, one that depends on temperament, personal history, and the culture which we live in."


"It is true that I suffered in a difficult and stupid love affair and that I worked at one bad job after another to try to keep myself going. Nevertheless, I remember that time as extraordinary, and I wouldn't trade it for anything. I don't even wish now that I had more money. And had I been asked if I was suffering at the time, I would have said a defiant no."


"I imagined Stephen's companion was a beautiful woman. Her form and coloring changed with my moving thoughts, but the idea that she existed remained to nag at me, and even though she was only a spook of my jealousy, I couldn't stop the surge of fantasies about her and Stephen. By the time I left the library, I had invented several elaborate plots involving the two of them."


"I am fascinated that no one I have read seems to have noticed that the literature on Picasso continually turns grown-up women into girls."


"No doubt I would have felt reverent in less lovely places, because I imagined a past I connected to myself."


"I read the stories I've been told in my own way and make a narrative of them. Narrative is a chain of links, and I link furiously, merrily hurdling over holes, gaps, and secrets. Nevertheless, I try to remind myself that the holes are there. They are always there, not only in the lives of others but in my own life as well."


"In this early memory he looks different from the way I would remember him later."


"In order to be accepted, women must compensate for their ambition and strength by being nice. Men don't have to be nearly as much d as women. I do not believe women are natively nicer than men. They may learn that niceness brings rewards and hat names ambition is often punished. They may ingratiate themselves because such behavior is rewarded and a strategy of stealth may lead to better results than being forthright, but even when women are open and direct, they are not always seen or heard."
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