Manhattan Quotes

“With these high winds I've so hurried that here I am at last in pity's doorway.
—Or maybe he was a poor wretch of a human being avid to the point of folly for liberty he wanted the dream to come true: descend from neither father nor mother nor historical memory, be the author of an authorless young man even just for a day, perhaps dream a short week away, let's say some some kind of unlimited eternity—the time of an elevator trip from false to true, ...”
― Hélène Cixous, Manhattan: Letters from Prehistory

“Everything takes place in the before-work, a prehistoric season when the characters, smitten with great dead authors, see themselves as books already, as volumes in their dreams, stealing up on the dreamed "Oeuvre," stealthy as wolves, on tiptoe like fools—closing in on the adored Author by Imitation, tracing paper, magic introjection. The copycat "does" Kafka, turns himself into Kafka, from A to Z commits Kafka suicide, right up to the spitting of blood, right up to the deathbed scene.”
― Hélène Cixous, Manhattan: Letters from Prehistory