Best 21 quotes of Sigrid Nunez on MyQuotes

A friend of mine who is working on a memoir says, I hate the idea of writing as some kind of catharsis, because it seems like that can't possibly produce a good book. You cannot hope to console yourself for your grief by writing, warns Natalia Ginzburg. Turn then to Isak Dinesen, who believed that you could make any sorrow bearable by putting into into a story or telling a story about it.

Anthropomorphism, I've decided, is inescapable, and though I might try to hide it I no longer fight it.

Beware irony, ignore criticism, look to what is simple, study the small and humble things of the world, do what is difficult precisely because it is difficult, do not search for answers but rather love the questions, do not run away from sadness or depression for these might be the very conditions necessary to your work. Seek solitude, above all seek solitude." ​

[Brodsky] loved cats, and sometimes for a greeting would meow.

I believe the intensity of the pity you feel for an animal has to do with how it evokes pity for yourself.... Innocence is something we humans pass through and leave behind, unable to return. But animals live and die in that state, and seeing innocence violated in the form of cruelty to a mere duck can seem like the most barbaric act in the world.

I confess to sudden rages. Walking in Midtown, rush hour's peak, people streaming in both directions, I find myself seething, ready to kill. Who are all these fucking people, and how is it fair, how is it even possible that all of them, these perfectly ordinary people, should be alive, when you--

If I bring him home though, I swear he’ll spend the rest of his life waiting by the door. And he deserves better than that, don’t you think?’ Yes, I think, my heart breaking. You can’t explain death. And love deserves better than that.

I know this is all moronically anthropomorphic, but sometimes that is the form love takes.

I like that the Aborigines say dogs make people human

I like that, well before T.S. Eliot expressed himself on the matter, Samuel Butler stated that the severest test of the imagination was naming a cat.

I once heard a stranger in agitated conversation with her pug: And I suppose it's all my fault again, isn't it? At which, I swear, the dog rolled its eyes.

Women are dangerous, they stop at nothing and they never let go.

Nothing has changed. It’s still very simple. I miss him. I miss him every day. I miss him very much. But how would it be if that feeling was gone? I would not want that to happen. I told the shrink: it would not make me happy at all not to miss him anymore.

Rather than write about what you know, you told us, write about what you see. Assume that you know very little and that you'll never know much until you learn how to see.

The dead dwell in the conditional, tense of the unreal. But there is also the extraordinary sense that you have become omniscient, that nothing we do or think or feel can be kept from you. The extraordinary sense that you are reading these words, that you know what they’ll say even before I write them.

There's a certain type of person who, having read this far, is anxiously wondering: Does something bad happen to the dog?

They don't want to see me lose my home. They want me to come to my senses before it's too late. I need a better way to cope with my feelings of loss and guilt. I need bereavement therapy. Here are some names. I should think about medication. Here's what worked for them. There are books. There are websites. There are support groups. Healing won't come from withdrawing into a fantasy world, isolating myself, spending all my time with a dog. There is such a thing as pathological grief. There is the magical thinking of pathological grief, which is a kind of dementia. Which in their collective opinion is what I have.

To draw me out, the therapist asks what I did for the holidays. When I tell him he says gently (he says everything gently), Sounds like that's one of the ways your loss has affected you: not wanting to be with other people. Hating to be with other people, I don't say. Terrified of being with other people.

What exactly did Simone Weil mean when she said, When you have to make a decision in life, about what you should do, do what will cost you the most. Do what is difficult because it is difficult. Do what will cost you the most. Who were these people?

Who doesn't know that the dog is the epitome of devotion? But it's this devotion to humans, so instinctual that it's given freely even to persons who are unworthy of it, that has made me prefer cats. Give me a pet that can get along without me.

Why do I think you did it? Because you were trapped upside down in a tankful of water. Because you were weak and in pain. Because you were tired of fighting.