Susan Taubes > Quotes

“And in this respect loves and plays and stories are like dreams: they end.”
― Susan Taubes, Divorcing

“I don’t blame you...I am happy since I learned to live with myself. My one dream is to have one or two women friends like myself to talk to; analyze our nature. Understand what makes us do what we do.”
― Susan Taubes, Divorcing

“That’s right; I didn’t care. I wanted to live in a kibbutz and pick oranges. So he made me read Marx. I didn’t agree with Marx so he made me read Kierkegaard and all the German romantics and mystics—that’s how I got involved in philosophy. I know I was a fool; I should have said Eckhart fits me to a ‘T’ and I would have had my peace. Look, I’ll admit Kant turned my head as a freshman in college, but already in my junior year—” “Darling, stop trying so hard. You realize all this talk is very sexy.”
― Susan Taubes, Divorcing

“She had accepted as part of marriage two people walking together in solitude and opposition.”
― Susan Taubes, Divorcing

“Her father quoted Nietzsche: “I’m not genius, I am dynamite.”
― Susan Taubes, Divorcing

“And what presumption to expect in this life to be perfectly awake.”
― Susan Taubes, Divorcing

“She was a great woman,” he says solemnly. I am dead. They can all relax and celebrate”
― Susan Taubes, Divorcing

“Kamilla dwells nostalgically on their blissful honeymoon on Lake Balaton. All she remembers is the ceiling. “For a month I didn’t leave the room.”
― Susan Taubes, Divorcing

“Sometimes it was possible to change yourself just by pressing your cheek against the window of the trolley.”
― Susan Taubes, Divorcing

“Ezra always won. Whatever the issue and regardless who started it, Ezra always managed to make her come out in the wrong.”
― Susan Taubes, Divorcing

“With Julia I have always felt like a child actor playing a female role. Was it to please others? What I wanted was of course to accomplish the act of deception. Yet not primarily to deceive others. This was simply a necessity. I had to present a face. No, I wanted to play a woman, it was my pleasure.”
― Susan Taubes, Lament for Julia

“Books were better than dreams or life. A book ended not like life, abruptly; not like a dream, with a clumsy struggle and sense of deception; but gracefully and knowingly, preparing you for the final period.”
― Susan Taubes, Divorcing

“The heart could never be blank, though it might be empty, or void. There were better words than blank. Vacant conjured rooms, deserted houses. Blank was a flat word, flat as a page. Void had depth; it was dark, or a foggy white. Empty pertained most to the heart. Marianna was not sure that she had a heart.”
― Susan Taubes, Lament for Julia

“My role combined diverse functions: priest, undertaker, uncle, at moments a theatrical producer, or an industrialist, Julia the commodity I was selling, or Julia was the event itself, the festival I was arranging.”
― Susan Taubes, Lament for Julia

“I hope you don’t intend to get married. Believe me, marriage ruins every happy relationship.”
― Susan Taubes, Divorcing

“JUDGE. (Amiably) You can always marry your former wife again. It’s no problem.”
― Susan Taubes, Divorcing

“Was it to understand why marriages broke down, what in particular a woman would not forgive a man; was it because of the future ahead of him, or for a movie he might make?”
― Susan Taubes, Divorcing

“It was around this time that I resolved to make something out of this wayward, dreaming Julia.”
― Susan Taubes, Lament for Julia