Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Deborah Levy

Quote by Deborah Levy

“I have always wanted to go to Trieste because it sounds like tristesse, which is a light-hearted word, even though in French it means sadness. In Spanish it is tristeza, which is heavier than French sadness, more of a groan than a whisper.”

Quote by Deborah Levy

Work

Hot Milk

Browse quotes and source details for this work. more

Author

Deborah Levy
Deborah Levy

Deborah Levy, born in 1959, is a distinguished playwright from the United Kingdom. Her works are known for their profound psychological insights and sharp social commentary. Levy's writing spans a variety of themes, including family, love, politics, and identity. more

You May Also Like

“I know the difference between sadness and depression. Clinical depression has no source from which it springs-it just is. Intractable sadness has nothing to do with synapses, or brain chemistry, or essential salts, it's born of something. It's the product of injustice and helplessness. It can be anesthetized, I suppose, but it's there, unaltered, when the medication wears off, like an intruder who has broken into your house and is still there every morning when you wake up. Given the choice, I would rather be depressed. I've come back from depression.”

“He needed her so badly, to reassure himself of his own existence, that he never comprehended the desperation in her dazzling, permanent smile, the terror in the brightness with which she faced the world, or the reasons why she hid when she couldn't manage to beam... every moment she spent in the world was full of panic, so she smiled and smiled and maybe once a week she locked the door and shook and felt like a husk, like an empty peanut-shell, a monkey without a nut.”