“The love between a writer and a reader is never celebrated.”
― Patricia Duncker, quote from Hallucinating Foucault
“All writers are, somewhere or other, mad. Not les grands fous, like Rimbaud, but mad, yes, mad. Because we do not believe in the stability of reality. We know that it can fragment, like a sheet of glass or a car's windscreen. but we also know that reality can be invented, reordered, constructed, remade. Writing is, in itself, an act of violence perpetrated against reality.”
― Patricia Duncker, quote from Hallucinating Foucault
“Well -- there are two kinds of loneliness, aren't there? There's the loneliness of absolute solitude -- the physical fact of living alone, working alone, as I have always done. This need not be painful. For many writers it's necessary. Others need a female staff of family servants to type their bloody books and keep the their egos afloat. Being alone for most of the day means that you listen to different rhythms, which are not determined by other people. I think it's better so. But there is another kind of loneliness which is terrible to endure....And that is the loneliness of seeing a different world from that of the people around you. Their lives remain remote from yours. You can see the gulf and they can't. You live among them. They walk on earth. You walk on glass. They reassure themselves with conformity, with carefully constructed resemblances. You are masked, aware of your absolute difference.”
― Patricia Duncker, quote from Hallucinating Foucault
“We articulate our fears, like children in the dark, giving them names in order to tame them.”
― Patricia Duncker, quote from Hallucinating Foucault
“You can say anything, anything, if it is beautifully said.”
― Patricia Duncker, quote from Hallucinating Foucault
“You write your first novel with the desperation of the damned. You're afraid that you'll never write anything else, ever again.”
― Patricia Duncker, quote from Hallucinating Foucault
“The love between writer and a reader is never celebrated. It can never be proved to exist. But he was the man I loved most. He was the reader for whom I wrote.
That’s what my writing was. Messages in bottles.”
― Patricia Duncker, quote from Hallucinating Foucault
“Ja pričam priče. Mi svi izmišljamo priče. Pričat ću ti priče koje će te nasmijati. Volim da te gledam kako se smiješ. Nikad neću pobjeći iz ovog zatvora beskrajnih priča.”
― Patricia Duncker, quote from Hallucinating Foucault
“Sav svoj novac je trošila na kupovinu knjiga, a sve vrijeme na njihovo čitanje. Sve su bile ispisane kritikama, odgovorima na marginama, ponekad su među njih bile umetnute čitave stranice komentara. Šunjala se kroz stoljeća pisanja, ostavljajući svoj znak kud god bi išla.”
― Patricia Duncker, quote from Hallucinating Foucault
“Madness and passion have always been interchangeable. Throughout the entire western literary tradition. Madness is an abundance of existence. Madness is a way of asking difficult questions. What did he mean, the powerless tyrant king? O Fool, I shall go mad.
Maybe madness is the excess of possibility,.... And writingis about reducing possibility to ne idea, one book, one sentence, one word. Madness is a form of self-expression. It is the opposite of creativity. You cannot make anything that can be separated from yourself if you are mad. And yet, look at Rimbaud -- and your wonderful Christopher Smart. But don't harbour any romantic ideas about what it means to be mad. My language was my protection, my guarantee against madness and when there was no one to listen my language vanished along with my reader.”
― Patricia Duncker, quote from Hallucinating Foucault
“Svi pisci su, na jedan ili drugi način, ludi. Jer mi ne vjerujemo u stabilnost stvarnosti. Mi znamo da se ona može raspasti kao komad stakla ili šoferšajba na autu. Ali mi također znamo da stvarnost može biti ponovo izmišljena, može joj se promijeniti redoslijed, može se izgraditi, ponovo napraviti. Pisanje je, samo po sebi, čin nasilja počinjenog protiv stvarnosti. Zar ne misliš i ti tako, petit? Mi to uradimo, ostavimo napisano, i iskrademo se neprimjetno...”
― Patricia Duncker, quote from Hallucinating Foucault
“Kao pobijeđeni revolucionar napustila je svoje seksualne barikade. Nešto se u njoj slomilo, nježno, tiho i nevoljko, i zagnjurila je lice u udubljenje između mog ramena i uha, ne opirući se. Bio sam veoma uznemiren njenom neobičnom nježnošću i tiho sam joj pričao ni o čemu naročitom dok nije zaspala u mom naručju.”
― Patricia Duncker, quote from Hallucinating Foucault
“I stared at the changing patterns on the back of his white shirt as he moved under the trees.”
― Patricia Duncker, quote from Hallucinating Foucault
“But...if it's so awful and difficult who not try to become a group? Be accepted?
He glittered at me for a moment, then said, I would rather be mad.”
― Patricia Duncker, quote from Hallucinating Foucault
“Ludilo i strast su se uvijek izmjenjivali. Kroz cijelu zapadnu književnu tradiciju. Ludilo je obilje egzistencije. Ludilo je način postavljanja teških pitanja.”
― Patricia Duncker, quote from Hallucinating Foucault
“And that is the loneliness of seeing a different world from that of the people around you. Their lives remain remote from yours. You can see the gulf and they can't.”
― Patricia Duncker, quote from Hallucinating Foucault
“Excess is essential to the production of austerity.”
― Patricia Duncker, quote from Hallucinating Foucault
“Maybe when you care, terribly, painfully, about the shape of the world, and you desire nothing but absolute, radical change, you protect yourself with abstraction, distance.”
― Patricia Duncker, quote from Hallucinating Foucault
Patricia Duncker
Born place: in Kingston, Jamaica
Born date June 29, 1951
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“Look at the way you live. You've sold out. Next thing I know you'll become a Republican." She shook her head. "Where are the values I raised you with?”
― Jeannette Walls, quote from The Glass Castle
“The purpose of life is to find your way back to a spiritual way of thinking and living—to be able to get past the physical stuff.”
― Wendy Higgins, quote from Sweet Evil
“Y mirá que apenas nos conocíamos y ya la vida urdía lo necesario para desencontrarnos minuciosamente.”
― Julio Cortázar, quote from Hopscotch
“We're just not cut out for all this media circus crap.
But then, you already knew that.”
― James Patterson, quote from Max
“Even the devil was an angel once, Alejandro.”
― M. Robinson, quote from El Diablo
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The Valley of the Wo...BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.
Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.
