Kathryn Harrison Quotes

I like nudging readers into a slightly different perspective, but in a sly way - I want to be the writer who slips a stiletto in and out, to make so swift and clean a cut, it's not until a chapter ends that the reader looks down and sees she's bleeding and asks what happened.

Scars are stories, history written on the body

For me, writing is inseparable from thinking. I could say the entire undertaking is a vast cerebral construct against my demons. It's the thing that I love. It's my identity.

I've always been interested in the intersection between our rational and our unconscious lives.

Don’t portray yourself as who you want to be. Portray yourself as who you are.

I can't work out much about myself or what I see in the world around me unless I do it through writing.

Writing is how I stay sane. It's completely necessary.

Sometimes there's a sort of tear in the veil, and there are people who live in more than one dimension.

There aren't many people in our history who have so completely surrendered themselves to a mission that they would give up their lives for it.

As a young woman, I was so eager to please that I served others' happiness and even their values before my own. It didn't earn me love, but it did deliver me to a place where I had to choose between what I thought of myself and what other people did. I chose myself.

The dizzy rapture of starving. The power of needing nothing. By force of will I make myself the impossible sprite who lives on air, on water, on purity.

My days are as long as despair can make them.

We're taught to expect unconditional love from our parents, but I think it is more the gift our children give us. It's they who love us helplessly, no matter what or who we are.