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" I knew I wanted to be a writer at 13. Before that, I told everyone I was going to be an artist. "
Siri Hustvedt
Going
Artist
Before
Related Quotes:
" Ego, id, and superego are terms familiar to all, but for many years, Freud's psychoanalytic theory has thrived in English departments around the country as a tool for interpreting literary texts but has rarely, if ever, been discussed in science departments. "
Siri Hustvedt
Years
ID
Country
" 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. "
Siri Hustvedt
Car Accident
Car
I Can
" Every mental state is also physical. "
Siri Hustvedt
State
Every
Also
" 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. "
Siri Hustvedt
Lived
Environment
Changes
" My greatest pleasure is spending time with my family: my husband and daughter, but also my mother, my three sisters, and their families. "
Siri Hustvedt
Daughter
Mother
Husband
" I'd been writing poems for many years, but most of them I didn't like. Then, when I was 23, I wrote one I did like, sent it to 'The Paris Review' - the highest publication I could think of - and they accepted it. No other moment in my literary life has quite come close to that. "
Siri Hustvedt
Think
Writing
Paris
" Most of us accept that although we may believe our dreams to be real events, upon waking, we can tell the difference between nocturnal hallucinations and reality. "
Siri Hustvedt
Dreams
Events
Reality
" It is tempting to think of this form of insomnia, the inability to fall asleep, as a disease of agency and control: the inability to relinquish high self-reflexive consciousness for the vulnerable, ignorant regions of slumber in which we know not what we do. "
Siri Hustvedt
Know
Fall
Control
" 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. "
Siri Hustvedt
High School
Film
Class
" Being a mother is complicated because it's not just a paternal culture making demands on you; it's those internal demands and expectations that women have and are self-generated. "
Siri Hustvedt
Culture
Women
Mother
" The future is, of course, imaginary - an unreal place that I create from my expectations, which are made from my remembered experiences, especially repeated experiences. "
Siri Hustvedt
Expectations
Future
Place
" I've come to understand that migraine is a part of the personality. I have migraine troughs. These often follow high productivity. I have a hypo-manic phase, then I'll crash. "
Siri Hustvedt
Follow
Personality
High
" 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 visual hallucination of a little pink man and a pink ox on the floor of my bedroom. "
Siri Hustvedt
Pink
Childhood
Long
" Every time the DSM prepares for a new edition, there are countless groups lobbying to get their particular mental illness recognized by the diagnostic manual. Surely, this is a social and cultural phenomenon. "
Siri Hustvedt
Mental
Get
New
" When I taught writing classes to psychiatric patients, I met people whose stories of manic highs and immobilizing lows appeared to be textbook descriptions of classic bipolar disorder. I met other patients who had been diagnosed with myriad disorders. No doctor seemed to agree about what they actually suffered from. "
Siri Hustvedt
Agree
Doctor
Classic
" I have found that all of my memories seem to need a place and that a good part of what we think of as explicit memory has to do with location. "
Siri Hustvedt
Think
Place
Memory
" In sleep, we leave behind the sensory stimulation of the outside world. "
Siri Hustvedt
World
Behind
Leave
" I garden. It's very relaxing to me. "
Siri Hustvedt
Me
Relaxing
Very
" I like 'nerves'! I like the word 'migraineur'. I like the word 'madness'. These are OK words. The 19th century had a very handy term: 'neurasthenic'. I think that's a very useful word. We all know what that means: it means extra-sensitive. "
Siri Hustvedt
Words
Think
Know
" 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
Children
Feel
Voice
" Every time I finish a book, I say to an imaginary god that I do not believe in, 'Please let me live to write another one.' "
Siri Hustvedt
Believe
Book
God
" Many scholars working in the humanities have already shown interest in brain research. For years, contemporary theory in the humanities has left the body and biology out of their discussions. "
Siri Hustvedt
Biology
Research
Brain
" The brain-mind is not a computer, and regarding it as one has led to a variety of theoretical dead ends. "
Siri Hustvedt
Variety
Computer
Dead
" 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. "
Siri Hustvedt
First
Never
Night
" I watched 'Holiday' in college, and that was when I had my first fantasy of being Katharine Hepburn, standing at the top of the staircase in a huge Hollywood mansion. "
Siri Hustvedt
College
Staircase
Holiday
" We live in a culture that is much happier talking about organic brain disease than about psychic illness because the former suggests that something that is physically wrong in a brain is wholly unrelated to that person's upbringing or experiences in the world, but that is not necessarily true. "
Siri Hustvedt
Brain
Culture
Live
" I found myself fascinated by neuroscience, attended a monthly lecture on brain science at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute, and was invited to become a member of a discussion group devoted to a new field: neuropsychoanalysis. "
Siri Hustvedt
Group
Science
New York
" I love making up visual works of art in language. I get to be an artist without actually being an artist in that sense. "
Siri Hustvedt
Without
Artist
Love
" Flashbacks rarely involve language. Mine certainly didn't. They were visual, motor, and sensory, and they took place in a relentless, horrifying present. "
Siri Hustvedt
Place
Visual
Language
" 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. "
Siri Hustvedt
Cooking
Think
Enjoy