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Quote by Maggie Nelson

“But this time, so far as I can tell, my mother has not made her husband her desire incarnate, though she does love him very much. And for his part, so far as I can tell, he doesn’t try to talk her out of her self-deprecation, nor does he abet it. He simply loves her. I am learning from him.”

Quote by Maggie Nelson

Work

The Argonauts

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Author

Maggie Nelson
Maggie Nelson

Maggie Nelson (b. 1973) is an American poet, essayist, and critic known for her genre-defying works that blend poetry, memoir, theory, and criticism. Her writing explores themes of gender, violence, family, and art. Her acclaimed book 'The Argonauts' won the 2016 National Book Critics Circle Award and became a landmark in queer theory and autobiographical writing. Nelson's unique style combines first-person narrative with philosophical inquiry, challenging traditional literary categories. She has taught at the California Institute of the Arts and the University of Southern California, and currently lives in Los Angeles. more

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“We grow up in a world where satisfying our cravings seems to be the number one objective, every advertisement on television and the newspaper calls for one craving or another to be dealt with. When it comes to sex we are bombarded every which way, so much so, that we think solving our cravings is the only way and the right way.”

“Prayer is based on the remote possibility that someone is actually listening; but so is a lot of conversation. If the former seems far-fetched, consider the latter: even if someone is listening to your story, and really hearing, that person will disappear from existence in the blink of a cosmic eye, so why bother to tell this perhaps illusory and possibly un-listening person something he or she is unlikely to truly understand, just before the two of you blip back out of existence? We like to talk to people who answer us, intelligently if possible, but we do talk without needing response or expecting comprehension. Sometimes, the event is the word, the act of speaking. Once we pull that apart a bit, the action of talking becomes more important than the question of whether the talking is working-because we know, going in, that the talking is not working. That said, one might as well pray.”