Furthest by Suzette Haden Elgin

Quote:
No matter how inconenient or unpleasant an illusion may be, if a man has chosen it himself and held it long enough, if he has built it up in sufficient detail and become accustomed to taking it into account upon every occasion, it will become precious to him and he will fight to maintain it in preference to even a pleasant truth. This is because it will have become one of the anchoring points of his mind, like the points which anchor the web of a spider, and to displace it will cause a shift in equilibrium for which painful compensation must be made. This is only a form of self-defense; nonetheless it inhibits growth.

Quote

"A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us." ~Franz Kafka - http://pinterest.com/pin/357614026634304928/?utm_source=android_share

Tennesse Williams

Memory is seated predominately in the heart.

Angela Carter quote

Reading a book is like re-writing it for yourself. You bring to a novel, anything you read, all your experience of the world. You bring your history and you read it in your own terms • Angela Carter
http://pinterest.com/pin/358317714075642085/

Annabel by Kathleen Winter

"You define a tree and you do not see what it is; it becomes its name. It is the same with woman and man. Everywhere ... one or the other, male or female, abandoned by the other."

Canadian author explores gender and "otherness" in story of hermaphrodite identity crisis. Do we know who we are apart from how we are defined by others? Winter lyrically deconstructs "know thyself."

1Q84 Haruki Murakami

Quote p. 178 "No matter how clear the relationships of things might become in the forest of story, there was never a clear-cut solution. ...The role of story was, in the broadest terms, to transpose a single problem into another form. Depending on the nature and direction of the problem, a solution could be suggested in the narrative. ...It was like a piece of paper bearing the indecipherable text of a magic spell. At times it lacked coherence and served no immediate practical purpose. But it would contain a possibility. Someday he might be able to decipher the spell."

Anais Nin

“We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are” – Anais Nin

Joanna Russ's On Strike Against God 1980

"I've lost my awe of the library completely: this vast, defunct megalith over which we little mammals wander, nipping and chewing bits of its skin." p.91

And yet, I wouldn't have been able to read this out-of-print book without interlibrary loan. I appreciate the metaphor by Russ, but I would have to say my awe of libraries remains unblemished.

Narcissism and ambition

"Narcissistic adults are widely thought to be the result of bitter disappointment, of radical disillusionment in the significant others in their infancy. Healthy adults accept their self-limitations (the boundaries and limitations of their selves). They accept disappointments, setbacks, failures, criticism and disillusionment with grace and tolerance. Their self-esteem is constant and positive, not substantially affected by outside events, no matter how severe."
- Perspectives - Vol. 6, No. 1 - A Primer on Narcissism - Page 1 of 3 (view on Google Sidewiki)