

“The therapy of psychoanalysis attempts to restore to the neurotic patient the freedom to be uninteresting that he lost somewhere along the way. It proposes to undermine the novelistic structures on which he has constructed his existence, and to destroy the web of elaborate, artful patterns in which he is caught.”
― The Journalist and the Murderer
― The Journalist and the Murderer

“To want nothing. Just to wait, until there is nothing left to wait for. Just to wander, and to sleep. To let yourself be carried along by the crowds, and the streets. To follow the gutters, the fences, the water’s edge. To walk the length of the embankments, to hug the walls. To waste your time. To have no projects, to feel no impatience. To be without desire, or resentment, or revolt.”
― Things: A Story of the Sixties / A Man Asleep
― Things: A Story of the Sixties / A Man Asleep

“I remember a seminar I once attended that was led by a brilliant and flamboyant Hungarian analyst named Robert Bak. The issue under debate was the nature of transference, and I raised my hand and asked rhetorically, "What would you call an interpersonal relationship where infantile wishes, and defenses against those wishes, get expressed in such a way that the persons within that relationship don't see each other for what they objectively are but, rather, view each other in terms of their infantile needs and their infantile conflicts. What would you call that?" And Bak looked over at me ironically and said, 'I'd call that life.”
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“Stars and blossoming fruit trees: Utter permanence and extreme fragility give an equal sense of eternity.”
― Gravity and Grace
― Gravity and Grace

“The most undervalued thing in this world is the time, attention, concentration, and patient effort of unhurried human beings.”
― Fear and Clothing: Unbuckling American Style
― Fear and Clothing: Unbuckling American Style
Neil’s 2024 Year in Books
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