Siri Hustvedt

“There is no future without a past, because what is to be cannot be imagined except as a form of repetition.”

“Not telling is just as interesting as telling I have found. Why speech, that short verbal journey from inside to outside can be excrutiating under certain circumstances is fascinating.”

“We chart delusions through collective agreement.”

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

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

“A book is a collaboration between the one who reads and what is read and, at its best, that coming together is a love story like any other.”

“Scientists have a tendency to believe in absolutes, in studies and the repeating of them. Psychoanalysis is firmly based in subjective accounts. We need both.”

“I have suffered from migraines since childhood and have long been curious about my own aching head, my dizziness, my divine lifting feelings, my sparklers and black holes, and my single visu...”

“Bedtime rituals for children ease the way to the elsewhere of slumber - teeth brushing and pajamas, the voice of a parent reading, the feel and smell of the old blanket or toy, the nightligh...”

“There was a film class in my high school in Northfield, Minnesota, which was very unusual. I saw my first Buster Keaton film there, aged about 15. It made a gigantic impression on me.”

“In August of 2002, I survived a car accident. Although I can still see the van speeding toward us, I cannot bring to mind the crash itself - only its aftermath.”

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

“If something's not working, it's wonderful to have a reader you can trust to say, 'Actually, you've gone off the deep end here'.”

“I enjoy domestic life. Cooking gives me great pleasure, especially if I can chop vegetables slowly and think about what I'm doing and dream a little about this and that.”

“My feeling is, when you are writing an essay, you don't make anything up. This may be a very Protestant notion, and I'm aware of the fact that memory is fallible, that if I had access to fil...”

“The mind-brain is lived only from a first-person perspective, and it is a dynamic, plastic organ that changes in relation to the environment.”

“I am always suspicious of those who impose 'rules' on child rearing. Every child is different in terms of temperament and learning, and every parent responds to a particular child, not some...”

“When I was an impoverished graduate student, I would sometimes spend $20 or $30 on a T-shirt or accessory I didn't need or even particularly want. What I craved was the purchase, not the thi...”

“My greatest pleasure is spending time with my family: my husband and daughter, but also my mother, my three sisters, and their families.”

“I was 13 when I had my first bout of insomnia. My family was in Reykjavik, Iceland, for the summer, and day never really became night.”