Women Authors From The United States

"Where?" The woman scowled, bewildered. "Iowa," Agnes repeated loudly. The woman in black touched Agnes's wrist and leaned in confidentially. She moved her mouth in a concerned and exaggerated way, like a facial exercise. "No, dear," she said. "Here we say O-hi-o."

"As a vacuum cleaner can start to pull up the actual thread of a carpet, her brains had been sucked dry by too much yoga."

"But she had no memory of how to be brave. Here, it seemed, she had no memories at all. Nothing triggered them. And once in a while, when shegave voice to the fleeting edge of one, it seemed like something she was making up."

"Abby began to think that all the beauty and ugliness and turbulence one found scattered through nature, one could also find in people themselves, all collected there, all together in a single place. No matter what terror or loveliness the earth could produce- wind, seas- a person could produce the same, lived with the same, lived with all that mixed-up nature swirling inside, every bit. There was nothing as complex in the world- no flower or stone- as a single hello from a human being."

"And so they drove on. The night before, a whole day could have shape and design. But when it was upon you, it could vanish tragically to air."

"The little boy I watched throwing pebbles into the empty fountain [...] You could tell that he had too much wisdom for his age. Probably he believed that he wasn't made for this world. I wanted to say to him: If not you, who?"

"Sometimes I think: I am older than this tree, older than this bench, older than the rain. And yet. I'm not older than the rain. It's been falling for years and after I go it will keep on falling."

"Sometimes I forget that the world is not on the same schedule as I. That everything is not dying, or that if it is dying it will return to life, what with a little sun and the usual encouragement."

"Franz Kafka is dead.He died in a tree from which he wouldn't come down. "Come down!" they cried to him. "Come down! Come down!" Silence filled the night, and the night filled the silence, while they waited for Kafka to speak. "I can't," he finally said, with a note of wistfulness. "Why?" they cried. Stars spilled across the black sky. "Because then you'll stop asking for me." The people whispered and nodded among themselves. [...] They turned and started for home under the canopy of leaves. Children were carried on their fathers' shoulders, sleepy from having been taken to see who wrote his books on pieces of bark he tore off the tree from which he refused to come down. In his delicate, beautiful, illegible handwriting. And they admired those books, and they admired his will and stamina. After all: who doesn't wish to make a spectacle of his loneliness? One by one families broke off with a good night and a squeeze of the hands, suddenly grateful for the company of neighbors. Doors closed to warm houses. Candles were lit in windows. Far off, in his perch in the trees, Kafka listened to it all: the rustle of the clothes being dropped to the floor, or lips fluttering along naked shoulders, beds creaking along the weight of tenderness. That night a freezing wind blew in. When the children woke up, they went to the window and found the world encased in ice."

"Perhaps that is what it means to be a father- to teach your child to live without you. If so, no one was a greater father than I."

"These things were lost to oblivion like so much about so many who are born and die without anyone ever taking the time to write it all down."

"Once upon a time there was a boy who loved a girl, and her laughter was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering."

"“Once upon a time, there was a boy. He lived in a village that no longer exists, in a house that no longer exists, on the edge of a field that no longer exists, where everything was discovered, and everything was possible. A stick could be a sword, a pebble could be a diamond, a tree, a castle. Once upon a time, there was a boy who lived in a house across the field, from a girl who no longer exists. They made up a thousand games. She was queen and he was king. In the autumn light her hair shone like a crown. They collected the world in small handfuls, and when the sky grew dark, and they parted with leaves in their hair."

"When I got up again, I'd shed the only part of me that had ever thought I'd find words for even the smallest bit of life."

"Even after the only person whose opinion I cared about left on a boat for America, I continued to fill pages with her name."

"When I got older I decided I wanted to be a real writer. I tried to write about real things. I wanted to describe the world, because to live in an undescribed world was too lonely."

"The words of our childhood became strangers to us- we couldn't use them in the same way and so we chose not to use them at all. Life demanded a new language."

"All I want is not to die on a day when I went unseen."

"My mother is English, and as she was the one who read to us, my early world was A .A. Milne, Beatrix Potter, Kenneth Grahame, Lewis Carroll and Roald Dahl. None of them thought it necessary to protect children from darkness. On the contrary, they guided their readers right toward it. This gives one an enormous sense of being respected as a child. Not just of being trusted to handle things as they are, but to be accepted as not entirely good. To be recognized as having darkness within oneself, too. I don’t think I’ve trusted any author since who doesn’t address me with that assumption."

"The windows in my bedroom face east and have no curtains, and to wake up into that light and a book is joy as I know it. I read many books at once, all of them paper. I think the book must be the most perfect object ever designed by humans. Their physical beauty and how well they work — dayenu! — but then there is the way they often absorb their reader’s presence, too. Tea, ink, greasy fingers, receipts, weather, but more than that, something of the spirit, too, so that years later you can take the book down off the shelf and a flash of your old self leaps out at you. I won’t easily give that up."

"(What kinds of books bring you the most reading pleasure these days?) NK: Novels that arrive at their coherence in unusual and elegant ways. That stretch form only to satisfy the book’s mysterious inner command. I love when I feel that both the author and I are surprised at where we find ourselves."

"Everything is an old story, even what we think of as the "self" is just a narrative that our parents began telling when we were born, of which we take up authorship."

"Years of writing novels in an instinctive, improvisatory way — without a plan, let alone a destination — taught me something about the value of sustaining uncertainty. Of asking questions, rather than pursuing answers. About the discoveries, epiphanies, and surprises one arrives at in this way, and the wonder that follows. After a while, it begins to move from a practice in one's writing and reading to a practice in one's own life, I think."

"There is little that matters more to me than my freedom and independence, artistic and otherwise. But I accept that once a book is put out into the world, it will be read, interpreted, and used by its readers as they see fit. I can agree or disagree, but by then the book is no longer mine; it's been given away to anyone else who cares to read it and invest themselves in it."

"All novels are, in their way, an act of resistance, since they insist on the importance and uniqueness of the individual life, and refuse to give in to the mass generalities on which governments and economies depend."

"When women are angry at men, they call them heartless. When men are angry at women, they call them crazy."

"Light like this does not exist, but we wish it did. We wish the sun could make us young and beautiful, we wish our clothes could glisten and ripple against our skins, most of all, we wish that everyone we knew could be brightened simply by our looking at them."

"My family had a lot of characteristics—achievements, ambitions, talents, expectations—that all seemed to be recessive in me."

"And the college business: My parents wanted me to go, I didn’t want to go, and I didn’t go. I got what I wanted. Those who don’t go to college have to get jobs. I agreed with all this. I told myself all this over and over. I even got a job—my job breaking au gratin dishes. But the fact that I couldn’t hold my job was worrisome. I was probably crazy. I’d been skirting the idea of craziness for a year or two; now I was closing in on it."

"I was that one who wore black and—really, I’ve heard it from several people—slept with the English teacher."

"My classmates were spinning their fantasies for the future: lawyer, ethnobotanist, Buddhist monk (it was a very progressive high school). Even the dumb, uninteresting ones who were there to provide “balance” looked forward to their marriages and their children. I knew I wasn’t going to have any of this because I knew I didn’t want it. But did that mean I would have nothing? I was the first person in the history of the school not to go to college."

"As far as I could see, life demanded skills I didn’t have."

"One of my teachers told me I was a nihilist. He meant it as an insult but I took it as a compliment."

"They did not put much value on my capacities, which were admittedly few, but genuine. I read everything, I wrote constantly, and I had boyfriends by the barrelful. “Why don’t you do the assigned reading?” they’d ask. “Why don’t you write your papers instead of whatever you’re writing—what is that, a short story?” “Why don’t you expend as much energy on your schoolwork as you do on your boyfriends?” By my senior year I didn’t even bother with excuses, let alone explanations. “Where is your term paper?” asked my history teacher. “I didn’t write it. I have nothing to say on that topic.” “You could have picked another topic.” “I have nothing to say on any historical topic.”"

"My self-image was not unstable. I saw myself, quite correctly, as unfit for the educational and social systems."

"“The person often experiences this instability of self-image as chronic feelings of emptiness or boredom.” My chronic feelings of emptiness and boredom came from the fact that I was living a life based on my incapacities, which were numerous. A partial list follows. I could not and did not want to: ski, play tennis, or go to gym class; attend to any subject in school other than English and biology; write papers on any assigned topics (I wrote poems instead of papers for English; I got F’s); plan to go or apply to college; give any reasonable explanation for these refusals."

"Quite often social contrariness and a generally pessimistic outlook are observed. Alternation between dependency and self-assertion is common."

"Borderline Personality Disorder* An essential feature of this disorder is a pervasive pattern of instability of self-image, interpersonal relationships, and mood, beginning in early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts. A marked and persistent identity disturbance is almost invariably present. This is often pervasive, and is manifested by uncertainty about several life issues, such as self-image, sexual orientation, long-term goals or career choice, types of friends or lovers to have, and which values to adopt."

"“A writer,” I said, when my social worker asked me what I planned to do when I got out of the hospital. “I’m going to be a writer.” “That’s a nice hobby, but how are you going to earn a living?” My social worker and I did not like each other. I didn’t like her because she didn’t understand that this was me, and I was going to be a writer; I was not going to type term bills or sell au gratin bowls or do any other stupid things."

"Later that day, when Alice was off having a Rorschach, I asked, “How can a person who’s never eaten honey have a family that can afford to send her here?” “Probably really incredibly crazy and interesting, so they let her in for less,” said Georgina."

"Every few months Torrey’s parents flew from Mexico to Boston to harangue her. She was crazy, she had driven them crazy, she was malingering, they couldn’t afford it, and so forth. After they left Torrey would give a report in her tired drawl. “Then Mom said, ‘You made me into an alcoholic,’ and then Dad said, ‘I’m going to see you never get out of this place,’ and then they sort of switched and Mom said, ‘You’re nothing but a junkie,’ and Dad said, ‘I’m not going to pay for you to take it easy in here while we suffer.’ ” “Why do you see them?” Georgina asked. “Oh,” said Torrey. “It’s how they show their love,” said Lisa. Her parents never made contact with her. The nurses agreed with Lisa. They told Torrey she was mature for agreeing to see her parents when she knew they were going to confuse her. Confuse was the nurses’ word for abuse."

"Often an entire family is crazy, but since an entire family can’t go into the hospital, one person is designated as crazy and goes inside. Then, depending on how the rest of the family is feeling, that person is kept inside or snatched out, to prove something about the family’s mental health."

"The world didn’t stop because we weren’t in it anymore; far from it. Night after night tiny bodies fell to the ground on our TV screen: black people, young people, Vietnamese people, poor people—some dead, some only bashed up for the moment. There were always more of them to replace the fallen and join them the next night. Then came the period when people we knew—not knew personally, but knew of—started falling to the ground: Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy. Was that more alarming? Lisa said it was natural. “They gotta kill them,” she explained. “Otherwise it’ll never settle down.”"

"Most of us saw our therapists every day. Cynthia didn’t; she had therapy twice a week and shock therapy once a week. And Lisa didn’t go to therapy. She had a therapist, but he used her hour to take a nap. If she was extremely bored, she’d demand to be taken to his office, where she’d find him snoozing in his chair. “Gotcha!” she’d say. Then she’d come back to the ward. The rest of us traipsed off day after day to exhume the past."

"A representative conversation with Dr. Wick: “Good morning. It has been decided that you were compulsively promiscuous. Would you like to tell me about that?” “No.” This is the best of several bad responses, I’ve decided. “For instance, the attachment to your high school English teacher.” Dr. Wick always uses words like attachment. “Uh?” “Would you like to tell me about that?” “Um. Well. He drove me to New York.” That was when I realized he was interested. He brought along a wonderful vegetarian lunch for me. “But that wasn’t when it was.” “What? When what was?” “When we fucked.” (Flush.) “Go on.” “We went to the Frick. I’d never been there. There was this Vermeer, see, this amazing painting of a girl having a music lesson—I just couldn’t believe how amazing it was—” “So when did you—ah—when was it?” Doesn’t she want to hear about the Vermeer? That’s what I remember. “What?” “The—ah—attachment. How did it start?” “Oh, later, back home.” Suddenly I know what she wants. “I was at his house. We had poetry meetings at his house. And everybody had left, so we were just sitting there on the sofa alone. And he said, ‘Do you want to fuck?’ ” (Flush.) “He used that word?” “Yup.” He didn’t. He kissed me. And he’d kissed me in New York too. But why should I disappoint her? This was called therapy."

"Jerry was willowy and worried. He had one good trick. Now and then, someone with a lot of privileges was allowed to leave the hospital in a taxi. That person would say, “Jerry, call me a cab.” Jerry would say, “You’re a cab.” We loved this."

"When she’d been with us a month or so, Lisa Cody got a diagnosis. She was a sociopath too. She was happy, because she wanted to be like Lisa in all things. Lisa was not so happy, because she had been the only sociopath among us. “We are very rare,” she told me once, “and mostly we are men.”"

"It was a spring day, the sort that gives people hope: all soft winds and delicate smells of warm earth. Suicide weather."

"It’s important to cultivate detachment. One way to do this is to practice imagining yourself dead, or in the process of dying. If there’s a window, you must imagine your body falling out the window. If there’s a knife, you must imagine the knife piercing your skin. If there’s a train coming, you must imagine your torso flattened under its wheels. These exercises are necessary to achieving the proper distance. The motive is paramount. Without a strong motive, you’re sunk. My motives were weak: an American-history paper I didn’t want to write and the question I’d asked months earlier, Why not kill myself? Dead, I wouldn’t have to write the paper. Nor would I have to keep debating the question."

"Suicide is a form of murder—premeditated murder. It isn’t something you do the first time you think of doing it. It takes getting used to. And you need the means, the opportunity, the motive. A successful suicide demands good organization and a cool head, both of which are usually incompatible with the suicidal state of mind."