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Our memory fragments don't have any coherence until they're imagined in words. Time is a property of language, of syntax, and tense.

Siri Hustvedt

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Siri Hustvedt
Age: 69
Born: 1955
Born: February 19
Essayist
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Northfield
Minnesota
Premio princesa de Asturias 2019
Fragments
Imagined
Memory
Property
Memories
Words
Syntax
Language
Coherence
Time
Tense

More quotes by Siri Hustvedt

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That night as I lay in bed, I thought of several things I could have said and mourned the fact that my wit usually bloomed late, peaking when it no longer mattered, during the solitary hours close to midnight.
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Ture stories can't be told forward, only backward. We invent them from the vantage point of an ever-changing present and tell ourselves how they unfolded.
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Women really are not supposed to be imaginative. That creativity of this kind is supposed to belong to men. You know, because women make babies. I find the double standards shocking.
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Memory is essential to who we are, and memories can be both implicit and explicit - unconscious and conscious.
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Dreams are stories made by and for the dreamer, and each dreamer has his own folds to open and knots to untie.
Siri Hustvedt
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I will turn human anatomy into roses and stars and sea. I will dissect the beloveds body in metaphor.
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Correlation is not cause, it is just a 'music of chance'.
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Great books are the ones that are urgent, life-changing, the ones that crack open the reader’s skull and heart.
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The truth is that personality inevitably bleeds into all forms of our intellectual life. We all extrapolate from our own lives in order to understand the world.
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Reading is a private pursuit one that takes place behind closed doors.
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Depression is when you think there's nothing to be done. Fortunately I always think there's something to be done.
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Many writers over the centuries simply do not have the reputations they deserve because they were female, and that is an act of suppression.
Siri Hustvedt
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Memory changes as a person matures.
Siri Hustvedt
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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.
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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 nightlight glowing in a corner.
Siri Hustvedt
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We read each other through our eyes, and anatomically they are an extension of our brains. When we catch someone's eye, we look into a mind.
Siri Hustvedt
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Writing fiction is like remembering what never happened.
Siri Hustvedt
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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.
Siri Hustvedt
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Every painting is always two paintings: The one you see, and the one you remember.
Siri Hustvedt
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The faculty of memory cannot be separated from the imagination. They go hand in hand. To one degree or another, we all invent our personal pasts. And for most of us those pasts are built from emotionally colored memories.
Siri Hustvedt