Quotes by Maggie Nelson

“For the fact is that neuroscientists who study memory remain unclear on the question of whether each time we remember something we are accessing a stable memory fragmentoften called a trace or an e...”

“Words change depending on who speaks them; there is no cure. The answer isn't just to introduce new words (boi, cis-gendered, andro-fag) and then set out to reify their meanings (though obviously t...”

“Eventually I confess to a friend some details about my weepingits intensity, its frequency. She says (kindly) that she thinks we sometimes weep in front of a mirror not to inflame self-pity, but be...”

“92. Eventually I confess to a friend some details about my weepingits intensity, its frequency. She says (kindly) that she thinks we sometimes weep in front of a mirror not to inflame self-pity, bu...”

“I truly dont understand why at every Q and A, someone always asks, Do you have a routine? or Do you write every morning? Why those questions remain interesting, I really have no idea. But since no ...”

“I like writing that puts the needle right into the vein. I dont think, when Im writing, Tell a good story or find a meaning. Im thinking phrase by phrase, make it tight, make it good. Get the idea ...”

“It is easier, of course, to find dignity in one's solitude. Loneliness is solitude with a problem. Can blue solve the problem, or can it at least keep me company within it?No, not exactly. It canno...”

“72. It is easier, of course, to find dignity in one's solitude. Loneliness is solitude with a problem. Can blue solve the problem, or can it at least keep me company within it?No, not exactly. It c...”

“I am trying to talk about what blue means, or what it means to me, apart from meaning.”

“Do not, however, make the mistake of thinking that all desire is yearning.”

“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 doesnt try to talk her o...”

“This is the dysfunction talking. This is the disease talking. This is how much I miss you talking. This is the deepest blue, talking, talking, always talking to you.”

“Evolution strikes me as infinitely more spiritually profound than Genesis.”

“So far as I can tell, most worthwhile pleasures on this earth slip between gratifying another and gratifying oneself. Some would call that an ethics.”

“We don't get to choose what or whom we love, I want to say. We just don't get to choose.”

“Trans may work well enough as shorthand, but the quickly developing mainstream narrative it evokes (born in the wrong body, necessitating an orthopedic pilgrimage between two fixed destinations) is...”

“Am I sitting here now, months later, in Los Angeles, writing all this down, because I want my life to matter? Maybe so. But I don't want it to matter more than others. I want to remember, or to lea...”

“[H]ow the force of one's adolescent curiosity and incipient lust often must war with the need to protect oneself from disgusting and wicked violators, how pleasure can coexist with awful degradatio...”

“For to wish to forget how much you loved someone-- and then, to actually forget-- can feel, at times, like the slaughter of a beautiful bird who chose, by nothing short of grace, to make a habitat ...”

“The mother of an adult child sees her work completed and undone at the same time.' If this holds true, I may have to withstand not only rage, but also my undoing. Can one prepare for one's undoing?...”