Home > Work > The Book of Promethea

The Book of Promethea QUOTES

The Book of Promethea QUOTES

1 " I do believe in poetry. I believe that there are creatures endowed with the power to put things together and bring them back to life "

― Hélène Cixous , The Book of Promethea

2 " I Drink. I Burn. I Dream.
And Sometimes, I tell Stories ! "

― Hélène Cixous , The Book of Promethea

3 " And I? I drink, I burn, I gather dreams.
And sometimes I tell a story. Because Promethea asks me for a bowl of words before she goes to sleep. "

― Hélène Cixous , The Book of Promethea

4 " It is because of this sea between us. The earth has never, up to now, separated us. But, ever since yesterday, there has been something in this nonetheless real, perfectly Atlantic, salty, slightly rough sea that has cast a spell on me. And every time I think about Promethea, I see her crossing this great expanse by boat and soon, alas, a storm comes up, my memory clouds over, in a flash there are shipwrecks, I cannot even cry out, my mouth is full of saltwater sobs. I am flooded with vague, deceptive recollections, I am drowning in my imagination in tears borrowed from the most familiar tragedies, I wish I had never read certain books whose poison is working in me. Has this Friday, perhaps, thrown a spell on me? But spells only work if you catch them. I have caught the Tragic illness. If only Promethea would make me some tea I know I would find some relief. But that is exactly what is impossible. And so, today, I am sinning.
I am sinking beneath reality. I am weighted down with literature. That is my fate. Yet I had the presence of mind to start this parenthesis, the only healthy moment in these damp, feverish hours.
All this to try to come back to the surface of our book...
Phone me quickly, Promethea, get me out of this parenthesis fast!) "

― Hélène Cixous , The Book of Promethea

5 " You make me thirsty, Promethea, my river, you make me eternally thirsty, my water. As if I had spent my life in an old house of dried mud, so dry myself that I could not even thirst, until yesterday. And suddenly yesterday, the dusty floor of my old house burst open and while I was still dozing away my parched existence, drop by drop I heard the music of coolness awaken the thirst under my dry soul. And leaning over the dark shaft of my life, I saw my childhood springs unearthed. Is that always how (by accident) we rediscover Magdalenian riches? "

― Hélène Cixous , The Book of Promethea

6 " If ever again we happened to lose our balance, just when sleepwalking through the same dream on the brink of hell’s valley, if ever the magical mare (whom I ride through the night air hollowed out into caverns and caves where wild animals live) in a crazy fit of anger over some word I might have said without the perfect sweetness that works on her like a charm, if ever the magic Mare looks over her shoulder and whinnies: “So! You don’t love me!” and bucks me off, sends me flying to the hyenas, if ever the paper ladder that I climb so easily to go pick stars for Promethea—at the very instant that I reach out my hand and it smells like fresh new moon, so good, it makes you believe in god’s genius—if ever at that very instant my ladder catches fire—because it is so fragile, all it would take is someone’s brushing against it tactlessly and all that would be left is ashes—if ever I had the dreadful luck again to find myself falling screaming down into the cruel guts of separation, and emptying all my being of hope, down to the last milligram of hope, until I am able to melt into the pure blackness of the abyss and be no more than night and a death rattle,

I would really rather not be tumbling around without my pencil and paper. "

― Hélène Cixous , The Book of Promethea

7 " We are going toward the sea. I have swollen. I am carried away. Sometimes at night love comes up so quickly and so high, and if we have no little boat perhaps it is because we want to roll breathless under the ocean floor. "

― Hélène Cixous , The Book of Promethea

8 " This is what’s happening: together we are descending the stairs of the heart, which lead to the sources. (It is a secret staircase. I knew it existed. Which is why I avoided it. Because it leads to the other-life, deep, underground, the fluvial, the painful.)

We are in the process of descending into the depths of the heart. To where bodies communicate with each other. "

― Hélène Cixous , The Book of Promethea

9 " Everything she wanted to tell her, was unable to tell her, because she was afraid of hearing her own voice come out of her heart and be covered with blood, and then she poured all the blood into these syllables, and she offered it to her to drink like this : “You have it. "

― Hélène Cixous , The Book of Promethea

10 " All I know: I could only encounter you, my oasis, coming out of a desert. Deserted myself. This is all right. My futureless and solitary self. When suddenly I hear the voice of the springs--Right away you made me want to sing. To cry. Then to drink. But after the desert, the merest trickle of water sounds like a storm. And ever since, Promethea's every murmur shakes my life like an earthquake. I was asleep. I was not thirsty. It would have been possible for me not to hear the first three tears. Ever since I never sleep. I listen. "

― Hélène Cixous , The Book of Promethea

11 " ...It makes me cry, I want to talk about something I am not sure I can talk about, I want to talk about the inside from the inside, I do not want to leave it
I am so happy in the silky damp dark of the labyrinth and there is no thread "

― Hélène Cixous , The Book of Promethea

12 " And I was afraid. She frightens me because she can knock me down with a word. Because she does not know that writing is walking on a dizzying silence setting one word after the other on emptiness. Writing is miraculous and terrifying like the flight of a bird who has no wings but flings itself out and only gets wings by flying. "

― Hélène Cixous , The Book of Promethea

13 " I will not say: that is because I am a city that does not want to surrender. Beseige me. It is because I am a deep, cool pyramid. Go through me. Pass through all my rooms and know my subterfuge. But you are passing right by the little room that I want to keep closed, and you don't see it. There is a secret. I myself do not know it, I just know it exists. "

― Hélène Cixous , The Book of Promethea

14 " The most beautiful things cannot be written, unfortunately. Fortunately. We would have to be able to write with our eyes, with wild eyes, with the tears of our eyes, with the frenzy of a gaze, with the skin of our hands. "

― Hélène Cixous , The Book of Promethea

15 " But I am just a woman who thinks her duty is not to forget. And this duty, which I believe I must fulfill, is: "as a woman" living now I must repeat again and again "I am a woman," because we exist in an epoch still so ancient and ignorant and slow that there is still always the danger of gynocide. "

― Hélène Cixous , The Book of Promethea

16 " ...I did not even know this existed...this world, I did not know. I thought it existed only in one's head, and in dreams....And now: here I am. "

― Hélène Cixous , The Book of Promethea

17 " -I am being killed by what keeps me from dying.
And next the sea became very small no bigger than a bathtub. Rolling in pain crashed over and over again onto the edges of the world. Then a divinity fished her out. "

― Hélène Cixous , The Book of Promethea

18 " This is a book of raw flesh. "

― Hélène Cixous , The Book of Promethea

19 " ...and this morning I am without fire, my marrow is ash, I am very sad. "

― Hélène Cixous , The Book of Promethea

20 " When you went away, you left me nothing but the sun-bleached world. You did not even leave me a heart to bleed with. I found I was standing there with no body, and so no voice for calling you. "

― Hélène Cixous , The Book of Promethea