“Reality had always been something of an unknown quantity to me.”
― Anna Kavan, quote from Ice
“Her albino hair illuminated my dreams, shining brighter than moonlight.”
― Anna Kavan, quote from Ice
“My ideas were confused. In a peculiar way, the unreality of the outer world appeared to be an extension of my own disturbed state of mind.”
― Anna Kavan, quote from Ice
“Something in her demanded victimization and terror, so she corrupted my dreams, led me into dark places I had no wish to explore. It was no longer clear to me which of us was the victim. Perhaps we were victims of one another.”
― Anna Kavan, quote from Ice
“I had never before met anyone who owned a telephone and believed in dragons.”
― Anna Kavan, quote from Ice
“What I saw had no solidity, it was all made of mist and nylon, with nothing behind.”
― Anna Kavan, quote from Ice
“Instead of my world, there would soon be only ice, snow, stillness, death; no more violence, no war, no victims; nothing but frozen silence, absence of life. The ultimate achievement of mankind would be, not just self-destruction, but the destruction of all life; the transformation of the living world into a dead planet.”
― Anna Kavan, quote from Ice
“I had a curious feeling that I was living on several planes simultaneously; the overlapping of these planes was confusing.”
― Anna Kavan, quote from Ice
“She herself did not seem quite real. She was pale and almost transparent, the victim I used for my own enjoyment in dreams.”
― Anna Kavan, quote from Ice
“So many dreams are crowding upon me now that I can scarcely tell true from false: dreams like light imprisoned in bright mineral caves; hot, heavy dreams; ice-age dreams; dreams like machines in the head.”
― Anna Kavan, quote from Ice
“She was trying to become invisible in the snow. Sudden terror had seized her: the thought of the man whose ice-blue eyes had a magnetic power which could deprive her of will and thrust her down into hallucination and horror. The fear she lived with, always near her, close behind the world's normal façade, had become concentrated on him. And there was another connected with him, they were in league together, or perhaps they were the same person.
Both of them persecuted her, she did not understand why. But she accepted the fact as she accepted all the things that happened to her, expecting to be ill-treated, to be made a victim, ultimately to be destroyed, either by unknown forces or by human beings. This fate seemed always to have been waiting for her, ever since time began. Only love might have saved her from it. But she had never looked for love. Her part was to suffer; that was known and accepted. Fatality brought resignation. It was no use fighting against her fate. She knew she had been beaten before the start.”
― Anna Kavan, quote from Ice
“Она жила в атмосфере, пропитанной страхом; если б когда-нибудь она познала доброе к себе отношение, все было бы иначе. Деревья, казалось, угрожали, таили злой умысел. Всю жизнь она воспринимала себя как приговоренную жертву, и вот лес стал злой силой, готовой ее истребить.”
― Anna Kavan, quote from Ice
“Нереальность внешнего мира казалась своеобразным продолжением моего собственного, пребывавшего в серьезном расстройстве сознания.”
― Anna Kavan, quote from Ice
“Я привык к ощущению приближающейся казни. Но до сих пор это было нечто отдаленное, с чем я постепенно сживался. А тут вдруг это ощущение набросилось на меня, схватило за локоть, и это уже было не просто что-то отдаленное, а реальность, которая вот-вот наступит. Это потрясло меня, как удар под дых. Прошлое исчезло, стало ничем; в будущем — непостижимая пустота полного уничтожения. Единственное, что осталось — это беспрерывно сокращающийся отрезок времени именуемый «сейчас».”
― Anna Kavan, quote from Ice
“Я подумал, что настоятельная потребность отыскать ее, словно она была утраченной частью меня самого, больше похоже не на любовь, а скорее на некое умопомрачение, слабость, которую необходимо изжить, вместо того чтобы позволять ей властвовать над собой.”
― Anna Kavan, quote from Ice
Anna Kavan
Born place: in Cannes, France
Born date April 10, 1901
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“It’s harder to kill people. The empathy is so much stronger that the mind must invent new reasons. But, if we can somehow link it to our own survival, the mind will make the devious twists and turns necessary to rationalize it. We’re very good at that. But it changes people. They learn to hate. Your wolf doesn’t need to hate what he kills. It would be easier if we could kill without compunction, like your wolf does, but then, we wouldn’t be human.”
― Jean M. Auel, quote from The Shelters of Stone
“Many girls have been romanced under the moon, and I don’t mean to say moonlight is overrated, but few I think have known the magic of a sunrise kiss.”
― Jerry Spinelli, quote from Love, Stargirl
“Are you kidding? That guy was a mystery wrapped in an enigma and crudely stapled to a ticking fucking time bomb. He was either going to hit somebody or start a blog.”
― Lev Grossman, quote from The Magicians
“Did they know why they knew? Not at all. But the Knew!”
― Malcolm Gladwell, quote from Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking
“The hills climbed sunward to the sun. ”
― Thomas Wolfe, quote from Look Homeward, Angel
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