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" 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
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" There is this assumption that much of what I write is about my life, and that simply is not true. "
Siri Hustvedt
Much
About
Write
" I have a longstanding fascination with visual art. I do, in fact, draw as well, as I did in 'The Summer without Men.' I also write essays about visual art. "
Siri Hustvedt
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Summer
Without
" Even in fiction, I feel rigorous honesty applies. It doesn't apply to facts; it applies to what I think of as not telling emotional lies, which is a funny business. "
Siri Hustvedt
Funny
Think
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" All human states are organic brain states - happiness, sadness, fear, lust, dreaming, doing math problems and writing novels - and our brains are not static. "
Siri Hustvedt
Brain
Fear
Happiness
" The English expression 'to fall asleep' is apt because the transition between waking and sleeping is a gradual drop from one state of being into another: a giving up of full self-consciousness for unconsciousness or for the altered consciousness of dreams. "
Siri Hustvedt
Drop
Giving Up
Giving
" We sometimes imagine we want what we don't really want. "
Siri Hustvedt
Really
Imagine
Want
" While reading 'David Copperfield' in the middle of the night - probably because of the light, I had insomnia for the first time - I looked out of the window and thought, 'If this is what books can do, this is what I want to do.' "
Siri Hustvedt
Thought
Night
Light
" We all live in a culture that is continually isolating feminine and masculine aspects, even when they're not related to people. "
Siri Hustvedt
Live
Masculine
People
" 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
" 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. "
Siri Hustvedt
Hysteria
Thought
Time
" 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. "
Siri Hustvedt
Brain
Memory
Research
" There are no rules in art. "
Siri Hustvedt
No Rules
Art
Rules
" 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
" 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
" Only time will tell in what ways Freud was prescient and in what ways he failed to understand how the mind functions. For example, no scientist and very few psychoanalysts still embrace Freud's death instinct. "
Siri Hustvedt
Death
Embrace
Mind
" 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
" 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'. "
Siri Hustvedt
Deep
You
Working
" Far more women read fiction than men, and because of this, novels have become marginalised as serious texts. "
Siri Hustvedt
Serious
More
Men
" 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. "
Siri Hustvedt
Consequences
Student
Need
" 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
" 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. "
Siri Hustvedt
How
Many
Mind
" 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
" 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. "
Siri Hustvedt
Difference
Blood
People
" Nobody knows what either sleep or waking consciousness is, even though these two have long been seen as the two sides of being: part of life's unvarying diurnal rhythm. "
Siri Hustvedt
Nobody
Two
Sleep
" 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
" Years ago, when I was in Siena for the first time, I saw the works of Duccio, whose deeply emotional painting from the thirteenth century has never left me. "
Siri Hustvedt
Painting
Never
Me
" 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.' "
Siri Hustvedt
Children
Bed
Night
" 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
" 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
" Although sometimes the morbid is also the transcendent, the transcendent cannot be reduced to the morbid. "
Siri Hustvedt
Sometimes
Morbid
Cannot