Drifts Quotes

“But that’s all I do lately too—I try to follow connections.”
― Kate Zambreno, Drifts

“Pienso en cómo Wittgenstein deseaba silencio en su vida, y como a menudo se retiraba a algún sitio, a una habitación escasamente amueblada, para poder pensar. A veces lo único que necesitaba era una silla en una habitación.”
― Kate Zambreno, Drifts

“Tal vez en esto consista la auténtica soledad. Preocuparse por un gato perdido que ni siquiera sabes si existe. Todos lo anotaron como si hubiera dicho algo profundo.”
― Kate Zambreno, Drifts

“Isn't that the basis of not only all art, but all religion? To have one's own dead.”
― Kate Zambreno, Drifts

“What is a novel but a large ancestral estate, after all-- there is history in the walls, one demands to be carried into every room, falling into a paroxysm of melancholy and rage when one room is left abandoned. The dogs linger in the room of the dying man, occupying spaces like something out of Velazquez, dancing among the absent-minded and drowsy things.”
― Kate Zambreno, Drifts

“over the imaginary solitude of others, what others do when they are alone, how they deal with the vastness and ephemerality of the day, which I think is for me increasingly the meaning of and crisis of art.”
― Kate Zambreno, Drifts

“art for me is a way to remark upon solitude, for myself and others. A way to mark time.”
― Kate Zambreno, Drifts

“People always say that about art, or any form of keeping time, of collecting. That they could do it—but of course they could do it, the thing is, whether they do or not.”
― Kate Zambreno, Drifts

“How precarious my life feels now. Will we move, will we stay here, will we have to welcome it, to see possibilities in it, not foreclose ourselves? Maybe we belong here, in this city. Or where else? How will I continue to exist, to write? I feel almost mesmerized by this sadness lately.”
― Kate Zambreno, Drifts

“The ones I love disappear, and I go chasing after them, and perhaps this is also why I am a writer.”
― Kate Zambreno, Drifts

“What prevents me from writing the book? The heat, the dog, the day, air-conditioning, desiring to exist in the present tense, constant thinking, sickness, fucking, groceries, cooking, yoga, loneliness and sadness, the internet, political depression, my period, obsession with skin care, late capitalism, binge-watching television on my computer, competition and jealousy over the attention of other writers, confusion over the novel, circling around but not finishing anything, reading, researching, masturbating, time passing.”
― Kate Zambreno, Drifts

“My mind spinning and stupid. “What prevents a book from being written becomes the book itself”—found in my notebook, citing the notebooks of Camus, who was himself quoting Marcus Aurelius.”
― Kate Zambreno, Drifts

“We are looking for new spaces, but what we are really looking for is retreat, clarity, to escape our internal chaos. For the days not to feel glued together.”
― Kate Zambreno, Drifts

“All I had left was the precarious life of a writer.”
― Kate Zambreno, Drifts