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41 " Sometimes we want to unbelong as much as we want to belong. "
― Deborah Levy , The Cost of Living: A Working Autobiography
42 " My love for my mother is like an axe. It cuts very deep. "
― Deborah Levy , Hot Milk
43 " When happiness is happening it feels as if nothing else happened before it, it is a sensation that happens only in the present tense. "
― Deborah Levy , Things I Don't Want to Know
44 " Anything covered is always interesting. There is never nothing beneath something that is covered. "
45 " It is dishonest to give me a poem and pretend to want my opinion when what you really want are reasons to live. "
― Deborah Levy , Swimming Home
46 " I have been waiting on her all my life. I was the waitress. Waiting on her and waiting for her. What was I waiting for? Waiting for her to step into her self or step out of her invalid self. Waiting for her to take the voyage out of her gloom, to buy a ticket to a vital life. "
47 " Yes, there had been many times I called my daughters back to zip up their coats. All the same, I knew they would rather be cold and free. "
48 " It was not that easy to convey to him, a man much older than she was, that the world was her world, too. He had taken a risk when he invited her to join him at his table. After all, she came with a whole life and libido of her own. It had not occurred to him that she might not consider herself to be the minor character and him the major character. In this sense, she had unsettled a boundary, collapsed a social hierarchy, broken with the usual rules. "
49 " I have never got a grip on when the past begins or where it ends, but if cities map the past with statues made from bronze forever frozen in one dignified position, as much as I try to make the past keep still and mind its manners, it moves and murmurs with me through every day. "
50 " Like everything that involves love, our children made us happy beyond measure – and unhappy too – but never as miserable as the twenty-first century Neo-Patriarchy made us feel. It required us to be passive but ambitious, maternal but erotically energetic, self-sacrificing but fulfilled – we were to be Strong Modern Women while being subjected to all kinds of humiliations, both economic and domestic. If we felt guilty about everything most of the time, we were not sure what it was we had actually done wrong." (from "Things I Don't Want to Know" by Deborah Levy) "
51 " I was flesh thirst desire dust blood lips cracking feet blistered knees skinned hips bruised, but I was so happy not to be napping on a sofa under a blanket with an older man by my side and a baby on my lap. "
52 " I can't stand THE DEPRESSED. It's like a job, it's the only thing they work hard at. Oh good my depression is very well today. Oh good today I have another mysterious symptom and I will have another one tomorrow. The DEPRESSED are full of hate and bile and when they are not having panic attacks they are writing poems. What do they want their poems to DO? Their depression is the most VITAL thing about them. Their poems are threats. ALWAYS threats. There is no sensation that is keener or more active than their pain. They give nothing back except their depression. It's just another utility. Like electricity and water and gas and democracy. They could not survive without it. "
― Deborah Levy
53 " Freedom is never free. Anyone who has struggled to be free knows how much it costs. "
54 " It would take a while for me not to think of the Greek language as the father who walked out on me "
55 " The young woman was a window waiting to be climbed through. A window that she guessed was a little broken anyway. "
56 " Everything was calm. The sun was shining. I was swimming in the deep. And then, when I surfaced 20 years later, I discovered there was a storm, a whirlpool, a blasting gale lifting the waves over my head.At first I wasn’t sure I’d make it back to the boat and then I realised I didn’t want to make it back to the boat. Chaos is supposed to be what we most fear but I have come to believe it might be what we most want. If we don’t believe in the future we are planning, the house we are mortgaged to, the person who sleeps by our side, it is possible that a tempest (long lurking in the clouds) might bring us closer to how we want to be in the world.Life falls apart. We try to get a grip and hold it together. And then we realise we don’t want to hold it together. "
57 " As Simone de Beauvoir had told us, women are not supposed to eclipse men in a world in which success and power are marked out for them. It is not easy to take up the historic privilege of dominance over women... if he is economically dependent on her talents. At the same time, she receives the fatal message that she must conceal her talents and abilities in order to be loved by him. "
58 " The fact that lipstick and mascara and eye shadow were called 'Make Up' thrilled me. Everywhere in the world there were made up people and most of them were women. "
59 " we do not have to conform to the way our life has been written for us, especially by those who are less imaginative than ourselves. "
― Deborah Levy , Real Estate
60 " This was the rearranged space of yesterday. "