Quotes from Hallucinating Foucault

“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

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“Minutes passed, each pulling my hopes down a little lower from the heights to which they had soared, and then, when tension on my nerves and the weight of the heavy rifle were becoming unbearable, I heard a stick snap at the upper end of the thicket. Here was an example of how a tiger can move through the jungle. From the sound she had made I knew her exact position, had kept my eyes fixed on the spot, and yet she had come, seen me, stayed some time watching me, and then gone away without my having seen a leaf or a blade of grass move.”
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“You know, if you spent more time reading those romance books, you would have figured this out before now.”
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“Adam,' I say, 'had good times and he had bad times.' I pause here and glance at Nana, see that she is crying silently, the way I cried at the duck pond in the park. I was going to say something more about the bad times- how Adam's bad times were different from most people's, and that I'll never really understand them. But now that I see Nana's tears, see her start to reach for Papa's hand, then pull back and fold her hands in her lap again- now that I see Nana, I change my mind.
I think we should remember that Adam was one of those people who could lift the corners of our universe,' I say. I clear my throat. 'Thank you.'
As I slide into our pew I realize I feel older. I think of Janet and Nancy and find that nonw I can brush them away. And I understand that Adam and I are not as alike as I had thought. I remembered the tortured look on Adam's face the night of the Ferris wheel and the look of happiness, happiness, and realize that Adam's decision to take his life was not made easily. It took a certain kind of courage. Just not the kind of courage I chose.
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― Ann M. Martin, quote from A Corner of the Universe

“How could God design millions of new faces each day, keeping in mind the resemblance to the progenitor, who in turn was His genesis?”
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“Arise, take up your bed, and go to your house.” 7And he arose and departed to his house.”
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