© Eikoh Hosoe

"Reading the end of James Joyce's Ulysses when Molly Bloom is remembering is erotic because she gives permission, gives up and gives way, and this is always exciting and interesting because it is personal, not impersonal. Isn't it strange that looking at little abstract symbols on a white page can make a person feel susch things? I see her in his arms. I am in his arms. I remember your arms."

Siri Hustvedt, in Living, thinking, looking - essays

© Craig McDean

Search for a definition

AMBIGUITY: NOT QUITE ONE THING, not quite the other. Ambiguity resisty category. It won't fit into the pigeonhole, the neat box, the window frame, the encyclopedia. It is a formeless object or a feeling that can't be placed. And there is no diagram for ambiguity, no stable alphabet, no arithmetic. Ambiguity asks: Where is the border between this and that?

Siri Hustvedt, in Living, thinking, looking - essays

No one can truly escape her or his subjectivity. There is always a I or a We hiding somewhere...

© Annabel Clark - Siri Hustvedt's desk

"How do we see, remember, feel, and interact with other people? What does it mean to sleep, to dream, and to talking about? 
Who we are and how we got that way remain open queries, not only in the humanities but in the sciences as well.
I have come to believe that no single theoretical model can contain the complexity of human reality." 

Siri Hustvedt, in Living, thinking, looking - essays