Home / Quotes / Quote by Rebecca Solnit

Quote by Rebecca Solnit

“When I first began to write, I had been a child for most of my life, and my childhood memories were vivid and potent, and the forces that shaped me, Most of them have grown fainter with time, and whenever I write one down, I give it away: it ceases to have the shadowy life of memory and becomes fixed in letters: it ceases to be mine; it loses that mobile unreliability of the live.”

Book:A Field Guide to Getting Lost

Work

A Field Guide to Getting Lost

This book delves into the idea of getting lost as a metaphor for personal growth and the exploration of the unknown. It examines the psychological and philosophical aspects of wandering aimlessly and the insights that can be gained from such experiences. more

Author

Rebecca Solnit

Rebecca Solnit is an American writer known for her works on environmental, cultural, political, and social issues. Her writing spans a wide range of topics, including nature, travel, gender, and power. Her books include 'Wanderlust', 'A Field Guide to Getting Lost', and 'The Faraway Nearby'. more

“She had other favourite lines. Our gas oven blew up. The repairman came out and said he didn't like the look of it, which was unsurprising as the oven and the wall were black. Mrs Winterson replied, 'It's a fault to heaven, a fault against the dead, and a fault to nature.' That is a heavy load for a gas oven to bear. She liked that phrase and it was more than once used towards me; when some well-wisher asked how I was, Mrs W looked down and sighed, 'She's a fault to heaven, a fault against the dead, and a fault to nature.' This was even worse for me than it had been for the gas oven. I was particularly worried about the 'dead' part, and wondered which buried and unfortunate relative I had so offended.”

Life Childhood

Book:Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

Source: Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

“I think now that this is the great division between people. There are people who find life hard and those who find it easy. There are those who have a natural, in-built, expectation of happiness, and there are those who feel that happiness is not to be expected: that it is not, in fact, one of the rights of man. Nor, God knows, one of the rights of women.”

Happiness Feminism

Book:An Experiment in Love

Source: An Experiment in Love

“Because the victims are “only children,” their distress is trivialized. But in twenty years’ time these children will be adult who will feel compelled to pay it all back to their own children. They may consciously fight with vigor against cruelty in the world yet carry within themselves an experience of cruelty that they may unconsciously inflict on others. As long as it remains hidden behind their idealized picture of a happy childhood, they will have not awareness of it and will therefore be unable to avoid passing it on. It is absolutely urgent that people become aware of the degree to which this disrespect of children is persistently transmitted from one generation to the next, perpetuating destructive behavior. Someone who slaps or hits another adult or knowingly insults her is aware of hurting her. Even if he doesn’t know why he is doing this, he has some sense of what he is doing. But how often were our parents, and we ourselves toward our own children, unconscious of how painfully, deeply, and abidingly they and we injured a child’s tender, budding self?”

Childhood Abuse Child Abuse Feelings And Emotions Child Neglect

Author:Alice MIller, The Drama of the gifted child

“They didn't really have a childhood. Just them and Mom and then her liver went and she died and it was just them. Except they never learned to be grown-ups. And they never learned to be just kids, either. Stuck in never-never land. Kinda sad.”