My Death Quotes

“There’s something about a book you find by accident, a book no one else seems to have heard of, a book that thrills and then becomes a part of you, when it’s one you so easily might never have read at all—it seems like it found you.”
― Lisa Tuttle, My Death

“When I told my mother about the dream, she was puzzled. "But what's scary about that? You were never scared of that doll."
I shook my head, meaning that the doll I'd owned ⎯ and barely remembered ⎯ had never scared me. "But it was very scary," I said, meaning that the reappearance of it in my dream had been terrifying.
My mother looked at me, baffled. "But it's not scary," she said gently. I'm sure she was trying to make me feel better and thought this reasonable statement would help. She was absolutely amazed when it had the opposite result, and I burst into tears.
Of course she had no idea why, and of course I couldn't explain. Now I think ⎯ and of course I could be wrong ⎯ that what upset me was that I'd just realized that my mother and I were separate people. We didn't share the same dreams or nightmares. I was alone in the universe, like everybody else.”
― Lisa Tuttle, My Death

“What the dream had shown me was the familiar become strange, how frightening the ordinary can be.”
― Lisa Tuttle, My Death

“That was one of my fancies . . . my dreams and my fancies, now, I remember some of them as clearly as the things that were real. Perhaps my earliest memory was a dream.”
― Lisa Tuttle, My Death

“Home is the sailor, home from sea,”
― Lisa Tuttle, My Death

“Sad when talking about the past is the most excitement you can know.”
― Lisa Tuttle, My Death

“At that age, and in my impressionable state of mind, a suggestion from W. E. Logan had the force of a command.”
― Lisa Tuttle, My Death

“Of course she had no idea why, and of course I couldn’t explain. Now I think—and of course I could be wrong—that what upset me was that I’d just realized that my mother and I were separate people. We didn’t share the same dreams or nightmares. I was alone in the universe, like everybody else. In some confused way, that was what the doll had been telling me. Once it had loved me enough to let me eat its nose; now it would make me wake up screaming.”
― Lisa Tuttle, My Death

“In fact, this was exactly how I felt about my own first childhood home, which remained more clear in my memory, more real, than anywhere I had lived since. Those first ten years of life, in which I had so exhaustively explored my surroundings, had given me a depth of useless knowledge, made me an expert in the geography and furnishings of the house at 4534 Waring Street, Houston, Texas, between the years 1952 and 1963. I supposed that other people—unless, like my first husband, they’d moved house every year or two—carried around with them a similarly useless mental floorplan and inventory—but until now I’d never heard anyone else talk about it.”
― Lisa Tuttle, My Death

“any man who looked into a woman’s vagina would go blind),”
― Lisa Tuttle, My Death

“Now I think—and of course I could be wrong—that what upset me was that I’d just realized that my mother and I were separate people. We didn’t share the same dreams or nightmares. I was alone in the universe, like everybody else. In some confused way, that was what the doll had been telling me. Once it had loved me enough to let me eat its nose; now it would make me wake up screaming.”
― Lisa Tuttle, My Death

“The desire the narrator feels, shared by all of Tuttle’s women artists, is ultimately not the desire for a lover, a child, a name, or even a career, but for a self, always lost, perhaps just around the corner, if you only knew where to look. It is the self, not the man, that tantalizes and entraps. Tuttle’s characters always take the bait.”
― Lisa Tuttle, My Death