Our memory fragments don't have any coherence until they're imagined in words. Time is a property of language, of syntax, and tense.
Siri HustvedtAfter years of having immersed myself in science, I do think that if you master several different ways of thinking, it makes your own thought processes more agile.
Siri HustvedtThe logic: Reading is a private pursuit, one that often takes place behind closed doors. A young lady might retreat with a book, might even take it into her boudoir, and there, reclining on here silken sheets, imbibing the thrills and chills manufactured by writerly quills, one of her hands, one not absolutely needed to grip the little volume, might wander. The fear, in short, as one-handed reading. [p. 146]
Siri HustvedtI 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.
Siri Hustvedt