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ella_holden_'s reviews
16 reviews
The Colossus by Sylvia Plath
- p. 20 The Colossus: ‘I shall never get you put together entirely, pieced, glued, and properly jointed’. ‘Thirty years now I have laboured to dredge the silt from your throat, I am none the wiser.’
- p. 21 The Colossus: ‘the sun rises under the pillar of your tongue. My hours are married to shadow.’
- p. 22 Lorelei: ‘it is no night to drown in’
- p. 27 All The Dead Dears: ‘with a granite grin’
- p. 30 The Thin People: ‘they are always with us, the thin people’
- p. 33 Suicide Off Egg Rock: ‘His blood beating the old tattoo I am, I am, I am’
- p. 35 Mushrooms: ‘We shall by morning inherit the earth. Our foot’s in the door’
- p. 38 Watercolour of Grantchester Meadows: ‘hands laced, in a moody indolence of love’
- p. 39 The Ghost’s Leavetaking: ‘the no-colour void where the waking head rubbishes our the draggled lot of sulphurous dreamscapes and obscure lunar conundrums…sleep-twisted sheets’
- p. 40 The Ghost’s Leavetaking: ‘O keeper of the profane grail, the dreaming skull’
- p. 43 Black Rook In Rainy Weather: ‘I only know that a rook ordering its black feathers can so shine as to seize my senses, haul my eyelids up, and grant a brief respite from fear of total neutrality. With luck, trekking stubborn through this season of fatigue, I shall patch together a content of sorts. Miracles occur, if you care to call these spasmodic tricks of radiance miracles. The wait’s begun again, the long wait for the angel, for that rare, random descent.’
- p. 44 A Winter Ship: ‘a poor month for park-sleepers and lovers’
- p. 46 Full Fathom Five: ‘Your dangers are many. I cannot look much but your form suffers some strange injury and seems to die’
- p. 47 Full Fathom Five: ‘You defy other godhood, I walk dry on your kingdom’s border…Father, this thick air is murderous, I would breathe water’
- p. 50 Blue Moles: ‘What happens between us happens in darkness, vanishes easy and often as each breath’
- p. 54 Man In Black: ‘And you, across those white stones, strode out in your dead black coat, black shoes, and your black hair till there you stood, fixed vortex on the far tip, riveting stones, air, all of it, together’
- p. 60 Snakecharmer: ‘lids his moony eye’
- p. 80-88 Poems For A Birthday: ‘I am all mouth… Let me sit in a flowerpot, the spiders won’t notice… These halls are full of women who think they are birds… you are the one mouth I would be a tongue to… This is a dark house, very big, I made it myself, cell by cell from a quiet corner… He lives in an old well, a stony hole. He’s to blame… Eating the fingers of wisdom… The mother of mouths didn’t love me… O I am too big to go backward… Time unwinds from the great umbilicus of the sun its endless glitter. I must swallow it all… In the light the blood is black. Tell me my name… The sun sat in his armpit… Monkey lived under the dunce cap. He kept blowing me kisses. I hardly knew him… Call him any name, he’ll come to it… I’ve married a cupboard of rubbish. I bed in a fish puddle. Down here the sky is always falling… I am lost, I am lost, in the robes of all this light… When I fell out of the light. I entered the stomach of indifference, the wordless cupboard… This is the after-hell: I see the light… Love is the bone and sinew of my curse.’
- p. 21 The Colossus: ‘the sun rises under the pillar of your tongue. My hours are married to shadow.’
- p. 22 Lorelei: ‘it is no night to drown in’
- p. 27 All The Dead Dears: ‘with a granite grin’
- p. 30 The Thin People: ‘they are always with us, the thin people’
- p. 33 Suicide Off Egg Rock: ‘His blood beating the old tattoo I am, I am, I am’
- p. 35 Mushrooms: ‘We shall by morning inherit the earth. Our foot’s in the door’
- p. 38 Watercolour of Grantchester Meadows: ‘hands laced, in a moody indolence of love’
- p. 39 The Ghost’s Leavetaking: ‘the no-colour void where the waking head rubbishes our the draggled lot of sulphurous dreamscapes and obscure lunar conundrums…sleep-twisted sheets’
- p. 40 The Ghost’s Leavetaking: ‘O keeper of the profane grail, the dreaming skull’
- p. 43 Black Rook In Rainy Weather: ‘I only know that a rook ordering its black feathers can so shine as to seize my senses, haul my eyelids up, and grant a brief respite from fear of total neutrality. With luck, trekking stubborn through this season of fatigue, I shall patch together a content of sorts. Miracles occur, if you care to call these spasmodic tricks of radiance miracles. The wait’s begun again, the long wait for the angel, for that rare, random descent.’
- p. 44 A Winter Ship: ‘a poor month for park-sleepers and lovers’
- p. 46 Full Fathom Five: ‘Your dangers are many. I cannot look much but your form suffers some strange injury and seems to die’
- p. 47 Full Fathom Five: ‘You defy other godhood, I walk dry on your kingdom’s border…Father, this thick air is murderous, I would breathe water’
- p. 50 Blue Moles: ‘What happens between us happens in darkness, vanishes easy and often as each breath’
- p. 54 Man In Black: ‘And you, across those white stones, strode out in your dead black coat, black shoes, and your black hair till there you stood, fixed vortex on the far tip, riveting stones, air, all of it, together’
- p. 60 Snakecharmer: ‘lids his moony eye’
- p. 80-88 Poems For A Birthday: ‘I am all mouth… Let me sit in a flowerpot, the spiders won’t notice… These halls are full of women who think they are birds… you are the one mouth I would be a tongue to… This is a dark house, very big, I made it myself, cell by cell from a quiet corner… He lives in an old well, a stony hole. He’s to blame… Eating the fingers of wisdom… The mother of mouths didn’t love me… O I am too big to go backward… Time unwinds from the great umbilicus of the sun its endless glitter. I must swallow it all… In the light the blood is black. Tell me my name… The sun sat in his armpit… Monkey lived under the dunce cap. He kept blowing me kisses. I hardly knew him… Call him any name, he’ll come to it… I’ve married a cupboard of rubbish. I bed in a fish puddle. Down here the sky is always falling… I am lost, I am lost, in the robes of all this light… When I fell out of the light. I entered the stomach of indifference, the wordless cupboard… This is the after-hell: I see the light… Love is the bone and sinew of my curse.’
Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur
- p.33 'emptying out of my mother's belly was my first act of disappearance, learning to shrink for a family who likes their daughters invisible was the second. The art of being empty is simple; believe them when they say you are nothing, repeat it to yourself like a wish: i am nothing i am nothing i am nothing, so often the only reason you know you're still alive is from the heaving of your chest.'
- p. 45 'the closest thing to god on this earth is a woman's body: it's where life comes from, and to have a grown man tell me something so powerful at such a young age changed me to see the entire universe rested at my mother's feet.'
- p. 51 'i know i should crumble for better reasons, but have you seen that boy? he brings the sun to its knees every night.'
- p. 77 'kiss me like i am the centre point of gravity and you are falling into me; like my soul is the focal point of yours.'
- p. 194 'most importantly love like it's the only thing you know how. At the end of the day, all this means nothing: this page, where you’re sitting, your degree, your job, the money - nothing even matters except love and human connection; who you loved and how deeply you loved them, how you touched the people around you and how much you gave them.'
- p. 45 'the closest thing to god on this earth is a woman's body: it's where life comes from, and to have a grown man tell me something so powerful at such a young age changed me to see the entire universe rested at my mother's feet.'
- p. 51 'i know i should crumble for better reasons, but have you seen that boy? he brings the sun to its knees every night.'
- p. 77 'kiss me like i am the centre point of gravity and you are falling into me; like my soul is the focal point of yours.'
- p. 194 'most importantly love like it's the only thing you know how. At the end of the day, all this means nothing: this page, where you’re sitting, your degree, your job, the money - nothing even matters except love and human connection; who you loved and how deeply you loved them, how you touched the people around you and how much you gave them.'
Coraline by Neil Gaiman
- p. 69 'when you're scared but you still do it anyway, that's brave'
- p. 73 'there was a tiny doubt inside her, like a maggot in an apple core'. 'a flash of real anger, which crossed her face like summer lightning.'
- p. 82 'made of velvet night'
- p. 88 'spiders' webs only have to be large enough to catch flies'
- p. 102 'now we belong to the dark and to the empty places. The light would shrivel us, and burn'
- p. 126 'she loved Coraline as a miser loves money, or a dragon loves its gold'
- p. 131 'there is nothing down here... nothing but dust and damp and forgetting.'
- p. 73 'there was a tiny doubt inside her, like a maggot in an apple core'. 'a flash of real anger, which crossed her face like summer lightning.'
- p. 82 'made of velvet night'
- p. 88 'spiders' webs only have to be large enough to catch flies'
- p. 102 'now we belong to the dark and to the empty places. The light would shrivel us, and burn'
- p. 126 'she loved Coraline as a miser loves money, or a dragon loves its gold'
- p. 131 'there is nothing down here... nothing but dust and damp and forgetting.'
Trans Like Me: A Journey for All of Us by CN Lester
4.0
- p. 3 'her only crime was to be different. Not by choice but by some trick of nature'.
- p. 4 'These writers are recording the trans 'debate' in one language, and trans people like me are speaking the realities of our lives in a totally different tongue.' 'It is not just the absence of knowledge that keeps a truth from being widely known and accepted, it is also the active production of ignorance that suppresses the truth'
- p. 7 'For some trans people, one element of being trans is the physical process of transition. It can be joyful, it can be painful, it can be messy and it can involve surgery. the same could be said of parenthood. Conception, pregnancy and childbirth are necessary parts of making a family for the majority of people'.
- p. 8 'these words are blunt instruments, designed to give a rough understanding of the ever-changing world we find ourselves in'
- p. 9 'by implying that trans people are faddish and difficult about words, writers can cast aspersions on the validity of our language - and of our selves. By claiming that our words are too hard to understand, the media perpetuates the idea that we are too hard to understand, and suggests that there's no point in trying'. 'Wanting to be referred to in an accurate and respectful way isn't a trans-specific thing, but a cornerstone of polite society'.
- p. 11 'if we are not seen as trans, we run the risk of accusations of deceptions, of a scandalous 'reveal', if we don't announce that we are trans from the get-go.'
- p. 12 'our lives are truncated when we are seen only through the stereotypes of others'. 'Accept it as one crucial part and then, please, keep listening.' 'We, as trans people, are not the ones in control of the trans news story.' 'Trans people are far more likely to be written about as an 'issue' than we are tonbe recording our experiences and insights as equal participants.'
- p. 13 'When we are allowed to speak for ourselves, our answers are usually trimmed to fit a script written by others.'
- p. 16 'Trans people may choose not to consume transphobic media; we have no choice about living in a world shaped by this misinformation.'
- p. 17 'in the absence of real-life experience, cis people fell back on what they had learnt through the media. Overwhelmingly, what they had 'learnt' was that trans people are 'confused'.'
- p. 19 'we become complicit in the machine, knowing that if other people had not done the same for us, we would not be here today to keep the fight going.'
- p. 27 'the daily ways in which it is decided that some people are not as worthy of protection, of life, as others.'
- p. 33 'I can't overstate how hard it was to recognise myself as neither/nor when the whole world seemed to run as one or the other.' 'I barely knew what it felt like to be me.'
- p. 35 'I finally had the key to unlock all that I needed to tell about myself, and a tool with which to craft my future.'
- p. 36 'the more we expand our definitions, the more space there is for everyone. We push for the inclusion of these words into our common lexicon because, without them, it is so much easier to pretend that we're too impossible to exist.' 'What can be described can be communicated and made real, becomes a shield against that invisibility and dissolution.'
- p. 37 'Every time I was referred to with the wrong pronoun, a fundamental part of me was spoken away.' 'Trying to be understood by other people not prepared to understand.'
- p. 38 'How other people decide me is frequently confusing.' 'I would be scattered away into pieces if I let other people decide me in their own words.' 'We have a choice to respond with kindness rather than cruelty.' 'the compromises we all make between who we want to be and how the world wants us to behave.'
- p. 39 'it seems to have far less to do with gender than it does with broader issues of empathy and humility, and a willingness to understand that we are each the experts on our own lives.'
- p. 42 'I don't have to know every why of who I am to know the truth of my existence, and know that I can only find happiness by embracing that truth.'
- p. 44 'I don't understand how being true to my nature goes against it. I can't square that circle.'
- p. 45 'We hold off our transitions until it is transition or die. We are encouraged to do so. And some of us die. many of us who live have tried to.'
- p. 46 'I know myself, but not all that I could become.'
- p. 56 'Just listen to trans people and what we know of our own lives. We have been speaking this truth for a long time.' 'Revealing the body already felt to be there.'
- p. 58 'hoping for the basic right to breathe freely in our own bodies.'
- p. 61 'Is it possible to consider the body as something neutral that exists apart from the sexed and gendered terms we use to describe it?' 'Sex is a vast, infinitely malleable continuum.'
- p. 68 'As with many other things labelled 'unnatural' by our society, a better explanation of that particular usage would be 'something I do not approve of'.'
- p. 71 'It's not wanting a different body: it's knowing how your body should be, and living with the continuual pain of discord, as wrong as a broken bone.'
- p. 84 'A majority of trans adults became aware of their transness at a young age, an average of eight years old, they were also aware that knowledge was shameful and needed to be hidden away from their friends and families.'
- p. 86 'We have the chance to end that pattern of isolation and self-loathing, to make the experience of being unconditionally loved the norm, rather than the exception.'
- p. 94 'without being anything but the physical embodiment of something far greater and more beautiful than I could ever hope to be - this is who I am at the core.' 'Being trans is not a fate anyone needs saving from.'
- p. 107 'your life makes my life better - thank you for being here.'
- p. 112 'I found pride in presenting myself in a way that felt congruent with my inner self, in learning the exact things that made me feel happy and at home.'
- p. 114 'if someone loves a certain image of you - an image which misses your true self - then the actuality of who you are will never be enough.'
- p. 134 'We can be more than we were taught we could be. What other people say about us does not translate into who we are. There are many different paths to happiness, and even more ways in which to travel them.'
- p. 165 'in our interlockings, our intersections, there is power, hope, a path to something better.'
- p. 169 'something must exist in order for it to be suppressed.'
- p. 173 'We could take the best - the empathy and solidarity - and try to add to it, to pass that legacy down to the people who come after us. Not just as activists, but as individuals, we could do better in community than in division.'
- p. 188 'It was not hard, or threatening, to learn from one anothers' experiences: it was a gift.'
- p. 199 'her very existence a threat to be exterminated.'
- p. 206 'to build a better future we must first be able to imagine it.'
- p. 210 'when we assume that the arc of history will bend towards justice, we stop working to make it so.'
- p. 214 'a future in which our possibilities are limitless and our differences the links in a chain that join us in a common humanity.'
- p. 4 'These writers are recording the trans 'debate' in one language, and trans people like me are speaking the realities of our lives in a totally different tongue.' 'It is not just the absence of knowledge that keeps a truth from being widely known and accepted, it is also the active production of ignorance that suppresses the truth'
- p. 7 'For some trans people, one element of being trans is the physical process of transition. It can be joyful, it can be painful, it can be messy and it can involve surgery. the same could be said of parenthood. Conception, pregnancy and childbirth are necessary parts of making a family for the majority of people'.
- p. 8 'these words are blunt instruments, designed to give a rough understanding of the ever-changing world we find ourselves in'
- p. 9 'by implying that trans people are faddish and difficult about words, writers can cast aspersions on the validity of our language - and of our selves. By claiming that our words are too hard to understand, the media perpetuates the idea that we are too hard to understand, and suggests that there's no point in trying'. 'Wanting to be referred to in an accurate and respectful way isn't a trans-specific thing, but a cornerstone of polite society'.
- p. 11 'if we are not seen as trans, we run the risk of accusations of deceptions, of a scandalous 'reveal', if we don't announce that we are trans from the get-go.'
- p. 12 'our lives are truncated when we are seen only through the stereotypes of others'. 'Accept it as one crucial part and then, please, keep listening.' 'We, as trans people, are not the ones in control of the trans news story.' 'Trans people are far more likely to be written about as an 'issue' than we are tonbe recording our experiences and insights as equal participants.'
- p. 13 'When we are allowed to speak for ourselves, our answers are usually trimmed to fit a script written by others.'
- p. 16 'Trans people may choose not to consume transphobic media; we have no choice about living in a world shaped by this misinformation.'
- p. 17 'in the absence of real-life experience, cis people fell back on what they had learnt through the media. Overwhelmingly, what they had 'learnt' was that trans people are 'confused'.'
- p. 19 'we become complicit in the machine, knowing that if other people had not done the same for us, we would not be here today to keep the fight going.'
- p. 27 'the daily ways in which it is decided that some people are not as worthy of protection, of life, as others.'
- p. 33 'I can't overstate how hard it was to recognise myself as neither/nor when the whole world seemed to run as one or the other.' 'I barely knew what it felt like to be me.'
- p. 35 'I finally had the key to unlock all that I needed to tell about myself, and a tool with which to craft my future.'
- p. 36 'the more we expand our definitions, the more space there is for everyone. We push for the inclusion of these words into our common lexicon because, without them, it is so much easier to pretend that we're too impossible to exist.' 'What can be described can be communicated and made real, becomes a shield against that invisibility and dissolution.'
- p. 37 'Every time I was referred to with the wrong pronoun, a fundamental part of me was spoken away.' 'Trying to be understood by other people not prepared to understand.'
- p. 38 'How other people decide me is frequently confusing.' 'I would be scattered away into pieces if I let other people decide me in their own words.' 'We have a choice to respond with kindness rather than cruelty.' 'the compromises we all make between who we want to be and how the world wants us to behave.'
- p. 39 'it seems to have far less to do with gender than it does with broader issues of empathy and humility, and a willingness to understand that we are each the experts on our own lives.'
- p. 42 'I don't have to know every why of who I am to know the truth of my existence, and know that I can only find happiness by embracing that truth.'
- p. 44 'I don't understand how being true to my nature goes against it. I can't square that circle.'
- p. 45 'We hold off our transitions until it is transition or die. We are encouraged to do so. And some of us die. many of us who live have tried to.'
- p. 46 'I know myself, but not all that I could become.'
- p. 56 'Just listen to trans people and what we know of our own lives. We have been speaking this truth for a long time.' 'Revealing the body already felt to be there.'
- p. 58 'hoping for the basic right to breathe freely in our own bodies.'
- p. 61 'Is it possible to consider the body as something neutral that exists apart from the sexed and gendered terms we use to describe it?' 'Sex is a vast, infinitely malleable continuum.'
- p. 68 'As with many other things labelled 'unnatural' by our society, a better explanation of that particular usage would be 'something I do not approve of'.'
- p. 71 'It's not wanting a different body: it's knowing how your body should be, and living with the continuual pain of discord, as wrong as a broken bone.'
- p. 84 'A majority of trans adults became aware of their transness at a young age, an average of eight years old, they were also aware that knowledge was shameful and needed to be hidden away from their friends and families.'
- p. 86 'We have the chance to end that pattern of isolation and self-loathing, to make the experience of being unconditionally loved the norm, rather than the exception.'
- p. 94 'without being anything but the physical embodiment of something far greater and more beautiful than I could ever hope to be - this is who I am at the core.' 'Being trans is not a fate anyone needs saving from.'
- p. 107 'your life makes my life better - thank you for being here.'
- p. 112 'I found pride in presenting myself in a way that felt congruent with my inner self, in learning the exact things that made me feel happy and at home.'
- p. 114 'if someone loves a certain image of you - an image which misses your true self - then the actuality of who you are will never be enough.'
- p. 134 'We can be more than we were taught we could be. What other people say about us does not translate into who we are. There are many different paths to happiness, and even more ways in which to travel them.'
- p. 165 'in our interlockings, our intersections, there is power, hope, a path to something better.'
- p. 169 'something must exist in order for it to be suppressed.'
- p. 173 'We could take the best - the empathy and solidarity - and try to add to it, to pass that legacy down to the people who come after us. Not just as activists, but as individuals, we could do better in community than in division.'
- p. 188 'It was not hard, or threatening, to learn from one anothers' experiences: it was a gift.'
- p. 199 'her very existence a threat to be exterminated.'
- p. 206 'to build a better future we must first be able to imagine it.'
- p. 210 'when we assume that the arc of history will bend towards justice, we stop working to make it so.'
- p. 214 'a future in which our possibilities are limitless and our differences the links in a chain that join us in a common humanity.'
The Divided Self by R.D. Laing
-p. 17 'he experiences himself in despairing aloneness and isolation'
-p. 19 ''our' world will die with us although 'the' world will go on without us
- p. 20 'man does not exist without 'his' world nor can his world exist without him'
- p. 25 'I, for instance, regard any particular man as finite, as one who has had a beginning and who will have an end. He has been born, and he is going to die. In the meantime, he has a body that roots him to this time and this place'
-p. 37 'what an accomplishment it was when we, in fear and trembling, could tell our first lie, and make, for ourselves, the discovery that we are irredeemably alone in certain respects, and know that within the territory of ourselves there can be only our footprints.' 'All that you can see is not me'
-p. 38 'the only real death we recognise is biological death.' 'He either is God, or the Devil, or in hell, estranged from God.'
-p. 41 'we always find something...to give us the impression that we exist...yes, yes, we're magicians'
- p. 42 'unable to assume that the stuff he is made of is genuine, good, valuable. And he may feel his self as partially divorced from his body'
- p. 44 'to be hated may be feared for other reasons, but to be hated as such is often less disturbing than to be destroyed, as it is felt, through being engulfed by love.' 'If a man hates himself, he may wish to lose himself in the other: then being engulfed by the other is an escape from himself'
- p. 45 'he will be engulfed by the fire or the water, and either way be destroyed'. 'But this emptiness is him. Although in other ways he longs for the emptiness to be filled, he dreads the possibility of this happening because he has come to feel that all he can be is the awful nothingness of just this very vacuum'
- p. 47 'he could not become a 'person'. he had no 'self'. 'I am only a response to other people, I have no identity of my own'...He felt he was becoming more and more a 'mythical person'...'i am only a cork floating on the ocean''
- p. 48 'by destroying, in his own eyes, the other person as a person, he robbed the other of his power to crush him. By depleting him of his personal aliveness, that is, by seeing him as a piece of machinery rather than as a human being, he undercut the risk to himself of this aliveness either swamping him, imploding into his own emptiness, or turning him into a mere appendage'
- p. 51 'to consume oneself by one's own love prevents the possibility of being consumed by another'
- p. 53 'he would emerge into social life for a brief foray in order to get a 'dose' of other people, but 'not an overdose''
- p. 54 'she was a flower that had withered in the absence of one day's rain'
- p. 57 'if she was seen as an anonymity, as no one who especially mattered or as a thing, then she was no one in particular'. 'She was unable to fall in love with her own reflection'
- p. 69 'the body is felt more as one object among other objects in the world than as the core of the individual's own being'
- p. 74 'the individual is developing a microcosmos within himself'
- p. 82 'nothing moves; nothing is alive; everything is dead'
- p. 93 'he descends into a vortex of non-being in order to avoid being, but also to preserve being from himself'
- p. 106 'an awareness of oneself as an object of someone else's observation'. 'the gaze or scrutiny of the other can be experienced as an actual penetration into the core of the 'inner' self'
-p. 108 'there has never been a time in which I have been convinced from within myself that I am alive'
-p. 109 'it is the aim of my life to get people to look at me'. 'the unreality feeling came. I must never forget myself for a single minute.' 'He needs other people to experience him as a real alive person because he has never been convinced from within himself that he was alive'
-p. 111 'neurosis is a way of avoiding non-being by avoiding being'
- p. 112 'he turns the living spontaneity of his being into something dead and lifeless by inspecting it. This he does to others as well, and fears their doing it to him'
- p. 113 'he dreads real aliveness'
- p. 114 'i can't feel real unless someone is there.' 'the part he plays is always not quite himself'. 'His longing is to be known. But this is also what is most dreaded'
-p. 116 'it seems that the loss of the mother, at a certain stage, threatens the individual with loss of his self. The mother...is not simply a thing which the child can see, but a person who sees the child...a necessary component in the development of the self is the experience of oneself as a person under the loving eye of the mother'
- p. 118 'the whole point seems to lie in the child temporarily experiencing himself as not being seen'
- p. 119 'going to sleep consists, phenomenologically, in a loss of one's own awareness of one's being as well as that of the world'. 'Even worse, perhaps, than the possible presence of bad things in the dark is the terror that in the dark is nothing and no one'. 'the need to be perceived...extends to the general need to have one's presence endorsed or confirmed by the other, the need for one's total existence to be recognised; the need, in fact, to be loved'
-p. 122' 'lonely is not the same as being alone'
- p. 125 ' I am nobody, so I'll do nothing'. 'I derived a certain sardonic satisfaction out of becoming even less than I had thought I was or they had thought me to be'. 'on the fringe of being'
- p. 132 ' making it the aim of his life not to be himself'
- p. 139 'the creation of a form of death within life'
- p. 150 'he is dead, in order to remain alive'
- p. 152 'she's me, and I'm her all the time'
- p. 156 'she saw that her life had become a systematic attempt to destroy her own identity and to become nobody'
- p. 158 'a ghost cannot be killed'
- p. 165 'meeting you made me feel like a traveller who's been lost in a land where no one speaks his language'. 'Being crazy us like one of those nightmares where you try to call for help and no sound comes out'
p. 166 'if you had actually screwed me it would have wrecked everything. `it would have convinced me that you were only in pleasure with my animal body and that you didn't really care about the part that was a person. It would have meant that you were using me like a woman when I really wasn't one and needed a lot of help to grow into one. It would have meant you could only see my body and couldn't see the real me which was still a little girl. The real me would have been up on the ceiling watching you do things with my body. You would have seemed content to let the real me die. When you feed a girl, you make her feel that both her body and her self are wanted.This helps her get joined together. When you screw her she can feel that her body is separate and dead. People can screw dead bodies, but they never feed them.'
- p. 167 'a person kills because he really wants the other to be resurrected, not just lie dead. Loving is impossible at first because it turns you into a helpless little baby'. 'The self is therefore at the same time empty and starving'. 'Some people go through life with vomit on their lips. You can feel their terrible hunger but they defy you to feed them.'
- p. 171 'are you crying? Good'. 'But when did I go? I cannot find me. Where am I? Lost.'
- p. 172 'you can only be broken if you're already in pieces'
- p. 174 'I could only be good if you saw it in me... I wanted to tear out my stomach for being so hungry'
- p. 175 'The first time I cried, you made a terrible mistake; you wiped away my tears with a hankerchief. You had no idea how I wanted to feel those tears roll down my face. At least I had some feelings that were on the outside. If only you could have licked my tears with your tongue, I would have been completely happy. Then you would have shared my feelings.' 'The patient really wants to be dead and hidden in a place where nothing can touch him and drag him back'
- p. 176 'i went a little catatonic so i wouldn't feel anything. (I guess you had to die emotionally or your feelings would have killed you).'
- p. 190 'the dynamics of the family constellation'
- p. 195 'In her madness, there is no one there. She is not a person. There is no integral selfhood expressed through her actions or utterances. Incomprehensible statements are said by nothing. She has already died. there is now only a vacuum where there was once a person'
- p. 198 'I could be that wall. It's a terrible thing for a girl to be a wall'
- p. 200 'I was born under a black sun. I wasn't born, I was crushed out. It's not one of those things you get over like that. I wasn't mothered, I was smothered. She wasn't a mother. I'm choosey who I have for a mother. Stop it. Stop it. She's killing me. She's cutting out my tongue. I'm rotten, base. I'm wicked. I'm wasted time...'
- p. 202 'This child's mind is cracked. This child's mind is closed. You're trying to open this child's mind. I'll never forgive you for trying to open this child's mind. This child is dead and not dead.'
- p. 204 'I'm thousands. I'm an in divide you all. I'm no un.' 'Under the rays of the black sun she existed as a dead thing. Thus: I'm the prairie. She's a ruined city.'
-p. 19 ''our' world will die with us although 'the' world will go on without us
- p. 20 'man does not exist without 'his' world nor can his world exist without him'
- p. 25 'I, for instance, regard any particular man as finite, as one who has had a beginning and who will have an end. He has been born, and he is going to die. In the meantime, he has a body that roots him to this time and this place'
-p. 37 'what an accomplishment it was when we, in fear and trembling, could tell our first lie, and make, for ourselves, the discovery that we are irredeemably alone in certain respects, and know that within the territory of ourselves there can be only our footprints.' 'All that you can see is not me'
-p. 38 'the only real death we recognise is biological death.' 'He either is God, or the Devil, or in hell, estranged from God.'
-p. 41 'we always find something...to give us the impression that we exist...yes, yes, we're magicians'
- p. 42 'unable to assume that the stuff he is made of is genuine, good, valuable. And he may feel his self as partially divorced from his body'
- p. 44 'to be hated may be feared for other reasons, but to be hated as such is often less disturbing than to be destroyed, as it is felt, through being engulfed by love.' 'If a man hates himself, he may wish to lose himself in the other: then being engulfed by the other is an escape from himself'
- p. 45 'he will be engulfed by the fire or the water, and either way be destroyed'. 'But this emptiness is him. Although in other ways he longs for the emptiness to be filled, he dreads the possibility of this happening because he has come to feel that all he can be is the awful nothingness of just this very vacuum'
- p. 47 'he could not become a 'person'. he had no 'self'. 'I am only a response to other people, I have no identity of my own'...He felt he was becoming more and more a 'mythical person'...'i am only a cork floating on the ocean''
- p. 48 'by destroying, in his own eyes, the other person as a person, he robbed the other of his power to crush him. By depleting him of his personal aliveness, that is, by seeing him as a piece of machinery rather than as a human being, he undercut the risk to himself of this aliveness either swamping him, imploding into his own emptiness, or turning him into a mere appendage'
- p. 51 'to consume oneself by one's own love prevents the possibility of being consumed by another'
- p. 53 'he would emerge into social life for a brief foray in order to get a 'dose' of other people, but 'not an overdose''
- p. 54 'she was a flower that had withered in the absence of one day's rain'
- p. 57 'if she was seen as an anonymity, as no one who especially mattered or as a thing, then she was no one in particular'. 'She was unable to fall in love with her own reflection'
- p. 69 'the body is felt more as one object among other objects in the world than as the core of the individual's own being'
- p. 74 'the individual is developing a microcosmos within himself'
- p. 82 'nothing moves; nothing is alive; everything is dead'
- p. 93 'he descends into a vortex of non-being in order to avoid being, but also to preserve being from himself'
- p. 106 'an awareness of oneself as an object of someone else's observation'. 'the gaze or scrutiny of the other can be experienced as an actual penetration into the core of the 'inner' self'
-p. 108 'there has never been a time in which I have been convinced from within myself that I am alive'
-p. 109 'it is the aim of my life to get people to look at me'. 'the unreality feeling came. I must never forget myself for a single minute.' 'He needs other people to experience him as a real alive person because he has never been convinced from within himself that he was alive'
-p. 111 'neurosis is a way of avoiding non-being by avoiding being'
- p. 112 'he turns the living spontaneity of his being into something dead and lifeless by inspecting it. This he does to others as well, and fears their doing it to him'
- p. 113 'he dreads real aliveness'
- p. 114 'i can't feel real unless someone is there.' 'the part he plays is always not quite himself'. 'His longing is to be known. But this is also what is most dreaded'
-p. 116 'it seems that the loss of the mother, at a certain stage, threatens the individual with loss of his self. The mother...is not simply a thing which the child can see, but a person who sees the child...a necessary component in the development of the self is the experience of oneself as a person under the loving eye of the mother'
- p. 118 'the whole point seems to lie in the child temporarily experiencing himself as not being seen'
- p. 119 'going to sleep consists, phenomenologically, in a loss of one's own awareness of one's being as well as that of the world'. 'Even worse, perhaps, than the possible presence of bad things in the dark is the terror that in the dark is nothing and no one'. 'the need to be perceived...extends to the general need to have one's presence endorsed or confirmed by the other, the need for one's total existence to be recognised; the need, in fact, to be loved'
-p. 122' 'lonely is not the same as being alone'
- p. 125 ' I am nobody, so I'll do nothing'. 'I derived a certain sardonic satisfaction out of becoming even less than I had thought I was or they had thought me to be'. 'on the fringe of being'
- p. 132 ' making it the aim of his life not to be himself'
- p. 139 'the creation of a form of death within life'
- p. 150 'he is dead, in order to remain alive'
- p. 152 'she's me, and I'm her all the time'
- p. 156 'she saw that her life had become a systematic attempt to destroy her own identity and to become nobody'
- p. 158 'a ghost cannot be killed'
- p. 165 'meeting you made me feel like a traveller who's been lost in a land where no one speaks his language'. 'Being crazy us like one of those nightmares where you try to call for help and no sound comes out'
p. 166 'if you had actually screwed me it would have wrecked everything. `it would have convinced me that you were only in pleasure with my animal body and that you didn't really care about the part that was a person. It would have meant that you were using me like a woman when I really wasn't one and needed a lot of help to grow into one. It would have meant you could only see my body and couldn't see the real me which was still a little girl. The real me would have been up on the ceiling watching you do things with my body. You would have seemed content to let the real me die. When you feed a girl, you make her feel that both her body and her self are wanted.This helps her get joined together. When you screw her she can feel that her body is separate and dead. People can screw dead bodies, but they never feed them.'
- p. 167 'a person kills because he really wants the other to be resurrected, not just lie dead. Loving is impossible at first because it turns you into a helpless little baby'. 'The self is therefore at the same time empty and starving'. 'Some people go through life with vomit on their lips. You can feel their terrible hunger but they defy you to feed them.'
- p. 171 'are you crying? Good'. 'But when did I go? I cannot find me. Where am I? Lost.'
- p. 172 'you can only be broken if you're already in pieces'
- p. 174 'I could only be good if you saw it in me... I wanted to tear out my stomach for being so hungry'
- p. 175 'The first time I cried, you made a terrible mistake; you wiped away my tears with a hankerchief. You had no idea how I wanted to feel those tears roll down my face. At least I had some feelings that were on the outside. If only you could have licked my tears with your tongue, I would have been completely happy. Then you would have shared my feelings.' 'The patient really wants to be dead and hidden in a place where nothing can touch him and drag him back'
- p. 176 'i went a little catatonic so i wouldn't feel anything. (I guess you had to die emotionally or your feelings would have killed you).'
- p. 190 'the dynamics of the family constellation'
- p. 195 'In her madness, there is no one there. She is not a person. There is no integral selfhood expressed through her actions or utterances. Incomprehensible statements are said by nothing. She has already died. there is now only a vacuum where there was once a person'
- p. 198 'I could be that wall. It's a terrible thing for a girl to be a wall'
- p. 200 'I was born under a black sun. I wasn't born, I was crushed out. It's not one of those things you get over like that. I wasn't mothered, I was smothered. She wasn't a mother. I'm choosey who I have for a mother. Stop it. Stop it. She's killing me. She's cutting out my tongue. I'm rotten, base. I'm wicked. I'm wasted time...'
- p. 202 'This child's mind is cracked. This child's mind is closed. You're trying to open this child's mind. I'll never forgive you for trying to open this child's mind. This child is dead and not dead.'
- p. 204 'I'm thousands. I'm an in divide you all. I'm no un.' 'Under the rays of the black sun she existed as a dead thing. Thus: I'm the prairie. She's a ruined city.'