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.
You gave me back the paradise That I thought I lost for good You helped me find the reasons why It took me by surprise that you understood You knew all along What I never wanted to say Until I learned to love myself I was never ever lovin' anybody else.
What do any of us really know about love?
What you will see is love coming out of the trees, love coming out of the sky, love coming out of the light. You will perceive love from everything around you. This is the state of bliss.
What we have once enjoyed we can never lose. All that we love deeply becomes a part of us.
Love is the flower of life, and blossoms unexpectedly and without law, and must be plucked where it is found, and enjoyed for the brief hour of its duration.
you said Is there anything which is dead or alive more beautiful than my body,to have in your fingers (trembling ever so little)? Looking into your eyes Nothing,i said,except the air of spring smelling of never and forever. ....and through the lattice which moved as if a hand is touched by a hand(which moved as though fingers touch a girl's breast, lightly) Do you believe in always,the wind said to the rain I am too busy with my flowers to believe,the rain answered
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