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" 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
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" There are no rules in art. "
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" 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
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" The relationship between the imagined and the real is more complicated than people imagine. "
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People
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Complicated
" 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
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" 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
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Car
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" 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
Men
Summer
Without
" Novelists embody plural selves all the time. What are characters, after all, if not other selves? "
Siri Hustvedt
Embody
After
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" 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
" Writing isn't a job so much as a compulsion. I've been writing since I was very young because for some strange reason, I must write, and also because when I write, I feel more alive and closer to the world than when I'm not writing. "
Siri Hustvedt
Strange
Feel
Job
" The idea that skiing might not be fun, might not be for everyone, had never occurred to me. Where I come from, the sport signified pleasure, nature, family happiness. "
Siri Hustvedt
Happiness
Family
Come
" 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. "
Siri Hustvedt
Child
I Am
Learning
" 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
" Every mental state is also physical. "
Siri Hustvedt
State
Every
Also
" 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
" 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
" 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
" When I don't get enough sleep, I am cranky, vulnerable to headaches, and my concentration is poor. "
Siri Hustvedt
I Am
Sleep
Concentration
" Perception plays a vital role in the diagnosis of bipolar illness. Symptoms are perceived through the categories of psychiatric medicine at a given moment in history, categories which are continually shifting and being named or renamed. "
Siri Hustvedt
Moment
History
Medicine
" 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. "
Siri Hustvedt
People
Stress
Brain
" 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
" With almost no exceptions, art by men is much more expensive than art by women. Even great women artists, like Louise Bourgeois and Lee Krasner, are only fully embraced very late in their career. "
Siri Hustvedt
Career
Art
Great
" 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
" If I have open time, and I'm in Manhattan, I'll just walk to wherever I'm going, even if I could get there faster on the subway. I just love walking the streets of New York. "
Siri Hustvedt
Love
Walk
Time
" We sometimes imagine we want what we don't really want. "
Siri Hustvedt
Really
Imagine
Want
" I garden. It's very relaxing to me. "
Siri Hustvedt
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Relaxing
Very
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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 love the little garden in the back of my family's brownstone in Brooklyn. Digging out there in the dirt is a joy for me, although by the time August rolls around and my roses have black spot, I need the break winter provides. "
Siri Hustvedt
Joy
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