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" Intellectual curiosity about one's own illness is certainly born of a desire for mastery. If I couldn't cure myself, perhaps I could at least begin to understand myself. "

Siri Hustvedt

Desire

Curiosity

Born

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" None of us is immune to suggestion. We are social beings and live in a social world. "

" I am an American, but a sense of otherness was part of my growing up. I spoke Norwegian before I spoke English. My mother is Norwegian. "

Siri Hustvedt

Growing Up

Mother

" Henry Miller is a famous writer whose work has fallen out of fashion, but I strongly recommend that readers who don't know his work pick up a book and experience this writer's zealous, crazy, inventive, funny, sexy, often delirious prose. "

" I have not been diagnosed with epilepsy. I did have an MRI of the brain, and they found no abnormalities in my brain. Now, there are people with epilepsy who have completely normal MRI's, too. I just think also, you know, epileptic seizures can be triggered by emotional stress, by all kinds of things, lights. "

" The brain is an immensely complex organ, and many mysteries remain. Exactly how brain and mind or soma and psyche are related is one of them. "

" Sleep resistance, bouts of insomnia, nightmares, night terrors, crawling into bed with parents in the middle of the night - all these are so common among children, it seems fair to call them 'normal.' "

" I have a tendency to face my bad fantasies in my books. "

" Having children is one of the most passionate and involving bits of business in human life. "

" As one of four daughters, I grew up with an imaginary brother - wondering what it would have been like if one of us had been a boy. There's no question that there was a phantom boy child in my imagination when I was young. "

" 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. "

" 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 generalized infant or youngster. "

" 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 films or some absolute documentary evidence of what happened, it might look different; we get confused and fuzzy. "

" 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 thing itself. Of course, a sense of not being deprived may fill an emotional void without ruinous consequences. "

" Hysteria is something that I've been interested for a very long time. I thought I might have it, but it seems that it's unlikely. "

" That's one of the great lies of intimacy, to pretend you know everything - you cannot. No matter how close you've been, over however many years, there remain secrets. I think we all know that - that you don't tell everybody everything. "

" 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. "

" We all live in a culture that is continually isolating feminine and masculine aspects, even when they're not related to people. "

" I saw Joseph Cornell's lyrical work for the first time at the Museum of Modern Art in the late seventies and have internalized many of his boxes. "

" Neurobiological research has shown that in people with chronic PTSD, both stress hormone secretion and areas of the brain connected to memory function, such as the hippocampus, appear to be affected, although exactly how and why remains controversial. "

" 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.' "

" The brain-mind is not a computer, and regarding it as one has led to a variety of theoretical dead ends. "

" I am convinced that during bouts of insomnia, I have sometimes slept without knowing it. "

Siri Hustvedt

Knowing

Sometimes

" It's not as if I've been unlucky. My books have been published and reviewed. I haven't lived through terrible literary suffering! "

" 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. "

" Children are not in a position to assess risk and safety; it must be done for them, and it must be done carefully. "

" Each person does see the world in a different way. There is not a single, unifying, objective truth. We're all limited by our perspective. "

" There is a difference between using a made-up name and using real people as pseudonyms. People are not costumes you can wear. They are flesh and blood. "

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

" 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. "

" Creativity has always depended on openness and flexibility, so let us hope for more of both in the future. "