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Quote by Nicole Krauss

“In a sense, the self is more or less an invention from beginning to end. What is more unreal, what is more a creation than the self? Why do we have such a heavy investment in knowing what is true and what isn’t true about people’s lives? Why is it even valid to make a distinction between autobiography, auto-fiction and fiction itself? What fiction doesn’t contain a deep reflection of the author’s perspective and memory and sense of the world? - From an Interview with The Guardian, August 2017”

Quote by Nicole Krauss

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Nicole Krauss
Nicole Krauss

Nicole Krauss is an American author born on August 18, 1974. Her works are known for their unique narrative style and profound insights into human emotions. more

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“What happens out there is public—or at least fairly public," he qualified. "And what happens when somebody speaks or writes words—that's also public. But the things that go on inside these little circles are private. Private." He laid a hand on his chest. "Private." He rubbed his forehead. "Private." He touched his eyelids and the tip of his nose with a brown forefinger. "Now let's make a simple experiment. Say the word 'pinch.' " "Pinch," said the class in ragged unison. "Pinch . . ." "P-I-N-C-H—pinch. That's public, that's something you can look up in the dictionary. But now pinch yourselves. Hard! Harder!" To an accompaniment of giggles, of aies and ows, the children did as they were told. "Can anybody feel what the person sitting next to him is feeling?" There was a chorus of noes. "So it looks," said the young man, "as though there were-— let's see, how many are we?" He ran his eyes over the desks before him. "It looks as though there were twenty-three distinct and separate pains. Twenty-three in this one room. Nearly three thousand million of them in the whole world. Plus the pains of all the animals. And each of these pains is strictly private. There's no way of passing the experience from one center of pain to another center of pain.”

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“There are ribbons that ensnare, it seems, though I cannot feel these restraints: a tangle of shared understandings, expectations, values, and obligations that demarcate sentient boundaries and frame the articulation of essence. Yet, there is also something rather arbitrary and inadequate about these ribbons and their juxtaposition.”

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Book:trenches parallax leapfrog
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“And here, finally here in this place, in these circumstances, I will really have to kill him. And Snow will win. Hot, bitter hatred courses through me. Snow has won too much already today. It's a long shot, it's suicide maybe, but I do the only thing I can think of. I lean in and kiss Peeta full on the mouth. His whole body starts shuddering, but I keep my lips pressed to his until I have to come up for air. My hands slide up his wrists to clasp his. "Don't let him take you from me." Peeta's panting hard as he fights the nightmares raging in his head. "No. I don't want to..." I clench his hands to the point of pain. "Stay with me." His pupils contract to pinpoints, dilate again rapidly, and then return to something resembling normalcy. "Always," he murmurs.”

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“Raphael Samuel, a citizen of India, said he would sue his parents for giving birth to him … Samuel is telling people, especially Indian kids, that they don’t owe their parents anything; he also claims that putting a child through institutions like school and the job market without their consent is wrong. We should not reject Samuel’s complaint as ridiculous – there is a deep insight in it, but we have to avoid the confusion between the empirical and the transcendental level. Empirically, I am of course “thrown into the world,”. However, to become a Self, there has to be a transcendental act of self-positing ...”

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Book:Hegel in a Wired Brain
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“If there are whole parts of yourself that you are always running from, that you even feel justified in running from, then you’re going to run from anything that brings you into contact with your feelings of insecurity. And have you noticed how often these parts of ourselves get touched? The closer you get to a situation or a person, the more these feelings arise. Often when you’re in a relationship it starts off great, but when it gets intimate and begins to bring out your neurosis, you just want to get out of there. So I’m here to tell you that the path to peace is right there, when you want to get away. You can cruise through life not letting anything touch you, but if you really want to live fully, if you want to enter into life, enter into genuine relationships with other people, with animals, with the world situa-tion, you’re def i nitely going to have the ex-perience of feeling provoked, of getting hooked, of shenpa. You’re not just going to feel bliss. The message is that when those feelings emerge, this is not a failure. This is the chance to cultivate maitri, unconditional friendliness toward your perfect and imperfect self.”

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Book:Practicing Peace in Times of War
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