Violence is its own anesthetist. The numbness it induces feels very much like calm.
BARBARA GRIZZUTI HARRISONTo live exhilaratingly in and for the moment is deadly serious work, fun of the most exhausting sort
More Barbara Grizzuti Harrison Quotes
-
-
I love cloisters, which are the architectural equivalent of a theological concept: perfect freedom within set boundaries.
BARBARA GRIZZUTI HARRISON -
Italy offers one the most priceless of all one’s possessions – one’s own soul.
BARBARA GRIZZUTI HARRISON -
truth … is the first casualty of tyranny.
BARBARA GRIZZUTI HARRISON -
the gardens of our childhood are all beautiful.
BARBARA GRIZZUTI HARRISON -
My mother was my first jealous lover.
BARBARA GRIZZUTI HARRISON -
to have a crisis, and act upon it, is one thing. To dwell in perpetual crisis is another.
BARBARA GRIZZUTI HARRISON -
To surrender one’s vulnerable body to water has always seemed to me a limpid act of will that has no coutnerpart or equal, unless it is sex.
BARBARA GRIZZUTI HARRISON -
Children hold us hostage; they represent our commitment to the future.
BARBARA GRIZZUTI HARRISON -
Unhappiness makes beggars or accountants of us all.
BARBARA GRIZZUTI HARRISON -
One can be tired of Rome after three weeks and feel one has exhausted it; after three months one feels that one has not even scratched the surface of Rome; and after six months one wishes never to leave it.
BARBARA GRIZZUTI HARRISON -
If there is one lesson Rome teaches, it is that matter is good; in Rome the holy and the homely rise and converge.
BARBARA GRIZZUTI HARRISON -
All our loves are contained in all our other loves.
BARBARA GRIZZUTI HARRISON -
my love of water … is mingled with and almost indistinguishable from a fear of water (I can float in a vertical position – I enter a fugue state – but I cannot bear to bury my face in water).
BARBARA GRIZZUTI HARRISON -
Women’s propensity to share confidences is universal. We confirm our reality by sharing.
BARBARA GRIZZUTI HARRISON -
Belief sometimes precedes understanding; faith sometimes precedes scientific evidence.
BARBARA GRIZZUTI HARRISON -
it’s perfectly possible to hate one’s fat and to love one’s body at the same time.
BARBARA GRIZZUTI HARRISON -
There are no inanimate objects.
BARBARA GRIZZUTI HARRISON -
Fantasies are more than substitutes for unpleasant reality; they are also dress rehearsals, plans. All acts performed in the world begin in the imagination.
BARBARA GRIZZUTI HARRISON -
Desire creates its own object.
BARBARA GRIZZUTI HARRISON -
Collecting is like sex; satisfaction renews and creates new appetites.
BARBARA GRIZZUTI HARRISON -
Every house we have lived in, every building to which our hands have lent their work, belongs to us by virtue of love or of regret.
BARBARA GRIZZUTI HARRISON -
Food is my drug of choice.
BARBARA GRIZZUTI HARRISON -
In the face of evil, detachment is a dubious virtue.
BARBARA GRIZZUTI HARRISON -
Weather creates character.
BARBARA GRIZZUTI HARRISON -
Illness is regarded as a crime, and crime is regarded as illness.
BARBARA GRIZZUTI HARRISON -
Persecution always acts as a jell for members of cults; it proves to them, in the absence of history, liturgy, tradition, and doctrine, that they are God’s chosen.
BARBARA GRIZZUTI HARRISON