4.48 Psychosis
Quotes from the Book
And I want to play hide-and-seek and give you my clothes and tell you I like your shoes and sit on the steps while you take a bath and massage your neck and kiss your feet and hold your hand and go for a meal and not mind when you eat my food and meet you at Rudy's and talk about the day and type up your letters and carry your boxes and laugh at your paranoia and give you tapes you don't listen to and watch great films and watch terrible films and complain about the radio and take pictures of you when you're sleeping and get up to fetch you coffee and bagels and Danish and go to Florent and drink coffee at midnight and have you steal my cigarettes and never be able to find a match and tell you about the tv programme I saw the night before and take you to the eye hospital and not laugh at your jokes and want you in the morning but let you sleep for a while and kiss your back and stroke your skin and tell you how much I love your hair your eyes your lips your neck your breasts your arse your and sit on the steps smoking till your neighbour comes home and sit on the steps smoking till you come home and worry when you're late and be amazed when you're early and give you sunflowers and go to your party and dance till I'm black and be sorry when I'm wrong and happy when you forgive me and look at your photos and wish I'd known you forever and hear your voice in my ear and feel your skin on my skin and get scared when you're angry and your eye has gone red and the other eye blue and your hair to the left and your face oriental and tell you you're gorgeous and hug you when you're anxious and hold you when you hurt and want you when I smell you and offend you when I touch you and whimper when I'm next to you and whimper when I'm not and dribble on your breast and smother you in the night and get cold when you take the blanket and hot when you don't and melt when you smile and dissolve when you laugh and not understand why you think I'm rejecting you when I'm not rejecting you and wonder how you could think I'd ever reject you and wonder who you are but accept you anyway and tell you about the tree angel enchanted forest boy who flew across the ocean because he loved you and write poems for you and wonder why you don't believe me and have a feeling so deep I can't find words for it and want to buy you a kitten I'd get jealous of because it would get more attention than me and keep you in bed when you have to go and cry like a baby when you finally do and get rid of the roaches and buy you presents you don't want and take them away again and ask you to marry me and you say no again but keep on asking because though you think I don't mean it I do always have from the first time I asked you and wander the city thinking it's empty without you and want what you want and think I'm losing myself but know I'm safe with you and tell you the worst of me and try to give you the best of me because you don't deserve any less and answer your questions when I'd rather not and tell you the truth when I really don't want to and try to be honest because I know you prefer it and think it's all over but hang on in for just ten more minutes before you throw me out of your life and forget who I am and try to get closer to you because it's beautiful learning to know you and well worth the effort and speak German to you badly and Hebrew to you worse and make love with you at three in the morning and somehow somehow somehow communicate some of the overwhelming undying overpowering unconditional all-encompassing heart-enriching mind-expanding on-going never-ending love I have for you.
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What I sometimes mistake for ecstasy is simply the absence of grief.
255
You get mixed messages because I have mixed feelings.
160
If you died it would be like my bones had been removed. No one would know why, but I would collapse.
130
don't say no to me you can't say no to me because it's such a relief to have love again and to lie in bed and be held and touched and kissed and adored and your heart will leap when you hear my voice and see my smile and feel my breath on your neck and your heart will race when I want to see you and I will lie to you from day one and use you and screw you and break your heart because you broke mine first and you will love me more each day until the weight is unbearable and your life is mine and you'll die alone because I will take what I want then walk away and owe you nothing it's always there it's always been there and you cannot deny the life you feel fuck that life fuck that life fuck that life I have lost you now.
130
I love you still, Against my will.
95
I am much fucking angrier than you think.
75
No one survives life.
75
Death is my lover and he wants to move in.
64
If I could be free of you without having to lose you.
63
A small girl became increasingly paralysed by her parents' frequently violent rows. Sometimes she would spend hours standing completely still in the toilet, simply because that was where she happened to be when the fight began. Finally, in moments of calm, she would take bottles of milk from the fridge or doorstep and leave them in places where she may later become trapped. Her parents were unable to understand why they found bottles of sour milk in every room in the house.
44
I've faked orgasms before, but this is the first time I've faked not having an orgasm.
43
We made love, and then she threw up.
21
A circle is the only geometric shape defined by its centre. No chicken and egg about it, the centre came first, the circumference follows. The earth, by definition, has a centre. And only the fool that knows it can go wherever he pleases, knowing the centre will hold him down, stop him flying out of orbit. But when your sense of centre shifts, comes whizzing to the surface, the balance has gone. The balance has gone. The balance my baby has gone.
19
Your hair is an act of God.
18
M The heat is going out of me. C The heart is going out of me. B I feel nothing, nothing. I feel nothing.
17
You can only kill yourself if you're not already dead.
16
Because love by its nature desires a future.
14
No one can hate me more than I hate myself.
12
As a child I liked to piss on the carpet. The carpet rotted and I blamed it on the dog.
11
She ceases to continue with the day do day farce of getting through the next few hours in an attempt to ward off the fact that she doesn't know how to get through the next forty years.
7
A horror so deep only ritual can contain it.
7
She's sick to the fucking gills of herself and wishes wishes wishes that something would happen to make life begin.
4
Let the day perish in which I was born Let the blackness of night terrify it Let the stars of its dawn be dark May it not see the eyelids of the morning Because it did not shut the door of my mother's womb
4
I believe in anniversaries, that a mood can be repeated even if the event that caused it is trivial or forgotten. In this case, it's neither.
4
You fill my head as only someone who is absent can.
3
That's me. Exist in the swing. Never still, never one thing or the other, always moving from one extreme to the furthest reaches of the other.
3
Não me digas que não tu não podes dizer-me que não porque é tanto o alívio de amar de novo e deitar na cama e ser abraçado e tocado e beijado e teu coração saltará quando ouvires a minha voz e vires o meu sorriso e sentires a minha respiração no teu pescoço e teu coração vai disparar quando eu te quiser ver e eu irei mentir-te desde o primeiro momento e irei usar-te e irei penetrar-te e partirei o teu coração porque tu partiste o meu primeiro e tu me amarás mais a cada dia até que o peso desse amor seja insuportável e a tua vida seja minha e tu morrerás sozinha porque eu levarei o que eu quero e irei embora sem te deixar nada está sempre lá sempre esteve e não podes negar a vida que tu achas que é foda foda-se a vida foda-se a vida foda-se a vida agora que eu te perdi
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About Sarah Kane
More by Sarah Kane
4.48 Psychosis
About the book
Set in an unnamed city from which voices and images spring, Crave charts the disintegration of a human mind under the pressures of love, loss and desire.
Produced by Paines Plough and Bright Ltd (Guy Chapman and Paul Spyker), Crave premiered at the Traverse Theatre for the 1998 Edinburgh Festival. It received its English premiere at the Royal Court Theatre, London in September 1998.
Book details
- First published
- 1998
- Author
- Sarah Kane
- Genre
- Fiction
- Goodreads rating
- 4.09 (2k ratings) →
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