"Penso que as ideias são muito contagiosas e por isso é muito difícil libertarmo-nos de certas convenções, certas maneiras de pensar. Mas julgo que o caminho para aquilo que considero a liberdade de pensamento, tem a ver com perspectivas múltiplas, não estar presa apenas ao meu lugar na cultura, qualquer que ele seja. Mas deslocar-me da minha posição para outros lugares e imaginar o que seria ser outra pessoa. E isso cria um extraordinário sentimento de liberdade, porque não ficamos presos ao nosso lugar no mundo."

Siri Hustvedt, in O Valor da Liberdade - Diálogos Sobre as Possibilidades do Humano

© Duane Michals

"The work of psychoanalysis can turn ghosts into ancestors." 

Hans Loewald

Why sleep?

© Susannah Wimberley | Frances Barrett - Occupation, 2014

"Walking and sleeping are the two sides of being. Aristotle put it this way: «It is necessary that every creature wich wakes must also be capable of sleeping, since it is impossible that it should be always actualizing its powers.» This makes sense. We know that we have to sleep. We know that sleeplessness makes us cranky, stupid, and sad. And yet, why we sleep, why we dream, and even why we are wakeful - conscious - remain mysteries."

Siri Hustvedt, in Living, Thinking, Looking

© Gerhard Richter 

«When I look out of the window, then what I see outside is true for me in its various tones, colors, and proportions. It is truth and has its own rightness. This excerpt you like for that matter, is a constant demand on me, and it is a model for my pictures.» Gerhard Richter

What I see is true for me. This true is not the truth of science, of an objective view. It is not the camera's truth, nor is it an altogether private or solipsistic vision. I, too, can sit at the same window and point to a house we both see. That house can be shared, but the eyes of the painter will feel the demand of rightness in a way that I won't.
The demand of art is always also the demand of the world, a demand of truth (with a small t).

Siri Hustvedt, in Living, thinking, looking - essays

© 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