Women were like rivers, their banks were unreachable, the night often rang with the cries of the drowned.
Interpretation
This quote expresses the complexity and unattainability of women's emotions and experiences.
Thomas Bernhard's quote likens women to rivers, suggesting that their depths and boundaries are often beyond reach, symbolizing the emotional and psychological complexities that they embody. The imagery of drowning cries at night underscores the pain and struggle associated with navigating these depths, highlighting how difficult it can be to truly connect with or understand them.
In practice
In a discussion about gender dynamics, this quote highlights the deep emotional landscape of women.
In theory we understand people, but in practice we can't put up with them, I thought, deal with them for the most part reluctantly and always treat them from our point of view. We should observe and treat people not from our point of view but from all angles, I thought, associate with them in such a way that we can say we associate with them so to speak in a completely unbiased way, which however isn't possible, since we actually are always biased against everybody.
Only when I am by seawater can I truly breathe, to say nothing of my ability to think.
Everyone is a virtuoso on his own instrument, but together they add up to an intolerable cacophony.
I would be the unhappiest person imaginable, confronted daily with disastrous works crying out with errors, imprecision, carelessness, amateurishness. I avoided this punishment by destroying them, I thought, and suddenly I took great pleasure in the word destroying.
We have to keep company with supposedly bad characters if we are to survive and not succumb to mental atrophy. People of good character, so called, are the ones who end up boring us to death.
Everything is what it is, that's all. If we keep attaching meanings and mysteries to everything we perceive, everything we see that is, and to everything that goes on inside us, we are bound to go crazy sooner or later, I thought.
Love is the strongest power there is.
That is love, to give away everything, to sacrifice everything, without the slightest desire to get anything in return.3
Making disciples isnβt about gathering pupils to listen to your teaching. The real focus is not on teaching people at allβthe focus is on loving them.
We should meet in another life, we should meet in air, me and you.
Whether we love, or close our hearts to love, is a mental choice we make, every moment of every day.
A long time ago, there were lovers that lived on the opposite ends of a river. They promised to meet when the camellia flowers bloomed. But it rained so much the boat couldn't cross the river. So the two couldn't meet, even though the camellia flowers had all bloomed. Lets meet again. Before the camellia flowers wilt.
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