I don't want the words to be naked the way they are in faxes or in the computer. I want them to be covered by an envelope that you have to rip open in order to get at. I want there to be a waiting time -a pause between the writing and the reading. I want us to be careful about what we say to each other. I want the miles between us to be real and long. This will be our law -that we write our dailiness and our suffering very, very carefully.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of thoughtful, deliberate communication and the emotional distance that can exist between people.
Siri Hustvedt's quote reflects a deep yearning for meaningful communication that transcends mere words on a page. She expresses the desire for language to carry weight and emotion, to be enveloped in layers that require effort to access. This idea suggests that true connection goes beyond superficial exchanges, urging individuals to engage with each other thoughtfully and with care, allowing time for reflection and understanding, especially in a world where technology often makes communication too immediate and impersonal.
In practice
Using this quote in a speech about effective communication techniques.
Perception plays a vital role in the diagnosis of bipolar illness. Symptoms are perceived through the categories of psychiatric medicine at a given moment in history, categories which are continually shifting and being named or renamed.
Our memory fragments don't have any coherence until they're imagined in words. Time is a property of language, of syntax, and tense.
All human states are organic brain states - happiness, sadness, fear, lust, dreaming, doing math problems and writing novels - and our brains are not static.
under our love making I felt a bleakness that couldnt be dispelled. The sadness was in both of us, and I think we pitied ourselves that night, as if we were other people looking down on the couple who lay together on the bed
People who grow up with two or more languages understand that each can express certain aspects of reality better than the other.
The recollections of an older man are different from those of a younger man. What seemed vital at forty may lose its significance at seventy. We manufacture stories, after all, from the fleeting sensory material that bombards us at every instant, a fragmented series of pictures, conversations, odors, and the touch of things and people. We delete most of it to live with some semblance of order, and the reshuffling of memory goes on until we die.
Never Hesitate to hold out your hand; never hesitate to accept the outstretched hand of another.
In every encounter we either give life or we drain it; there is no neutral exchange.
My people are still poor. They're still working class. All of the characters that I write about are inspired by the community that I'm from.
The parent-child relationship in the home usually reflects the objective cultural conditions of the surrounding social structure. If the conditions which penetrate the home are authoritarian, rigid, and dominating, the home will increase the climate of oppression. As these authoritarian relations between parents and children intensify, children in their infancy increasingly internalize the paternal authority.
In fact, the class divide in the black community is now seen by some as a permanent aspect of our existence.
You say you felt a presence, but I only sensed an absence. A vague pain without a source. I was like a patient who cannot tell the doctor where it hurts, only that it does.
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