lispector street

“ISMENE: you are a person in love with the impossible. ANTIGONE: and when my strength is gone I’ll stop.”

“The first thing God made was love. Then comes the blood and the thirst for blood goaded by the body’s seed as if by salt.”

“If a person can’t get out of bed, something is making them exhausted. If a student isn’t writing papers, there’s some aspect of the assignment that they can’t do without help. If an employee misses deadlines constantly, something is making organization and deadline-meeting difficult. Even if a person is actively choosing to self-sabotage, there’s a reason for it — some fear they’re working through, some need not being met, a lack of self-esteem being expressed. People do not choose to fail or disappoint. No one wants to feel incapable, apathetic, or ineffective. If you look at a person’s action (or inaction) and see only laziness, you are missing key details. There is always an explanation. There are always barriers. Just because you can’t see them, or don’t view them as legitimate, doesn’t mean they’re not there. Look harder. Maybe you weren’t always able to look at human behavior this way. That’s okay. Now you are. Give it a try.”

“To be free does not simply mean to be untied or uncommitted. It is not the ‘release from’ something or disembodiedness which makes us free, but inclusion and embeddedness. The total lack of relationships causes anxiousness and worry. The Indo-European root ‘fri,’ from which terms such as ‘free,’ ‘peace’ or ‘quietude’ [in German, ‘Friede’], and ‘friend’ are derived, means ‘to love.’ Thus, ‘free’ originally meant ‘pertaining to friends or loved ones.’ One feels free in relationships of love and friendship. It is not the absence of ties, but ties themselves which set us free. Freedom is a word which pertains to relations par excellence. Without ‘hold’ there is no freedom.”