mental illness called social-pressure personality disorder.
“As I demonstrated this on Bob, he fell backwards onto me, completely inert and passive, with no hint of any reflexive reaction. Startled, I pushed him gently forward to the upright position, but now he started to topple forward; I could not balance him. I had a sense of bewilderment mixed with panic. For a moment, I thought that there had suddenly been a neurological catastrophe, that he had actually lost all his postural reflexes. Could acting like this, I wondered, actually alter the nervous system? The next day I was talking with him in his dressing room before the day’s shooting began, and as we talked, I noticed that his right foot was turned in with precisely the dystonic curvature it was held in when he portrayed Leonard L. on the set. I commented on this, and Bob seemed rather startled. “I didn’t realize,” he said. “I guess it’s unconscious.” He sometimes stayed in character for hours or days; he would make comments at dinner which belonged to Leonard, not himself, as if residues of the Leonard mind and character were still adhering to him.”
― On the Move: A Life
― On the Move: A Life
“Of the many strange things Einstein’s work revealed, the fluidity of time is the hardest to grasp. Whereas everyday experience convinces us that there is an objective concept of time’s passage, relativity shows this to be an artifact of life at slow speeds and weak gravity. Move near light speed, or immerse yourself in a powerful gravitational field, and the familiar, universal conception of time will evaporate. If you’re rushing past me, things I insist happened at the same moment will appear to you to have occurred at different moments. If you’re hanging out near the edge of a black hole, an hour’s passage on your watch will be monumentally longer on mine.”
― The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos
― The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos
“Plato talks about something called anamnesis, which is when something long forgotten comes to the surface of a man’s consciousness. Now, I’ll admit that just sounds like a fancy word for remembering something, but actually it’s more than that because with remembering, it’s not necessary to have forgotten anything, which makes for a subtle distinction. That’s what cinema does.”
― The Lady from Zagreb
― The Lady from Zagreb
“He was not imitating me; he had become me, in a sense; it was like suddenly acquiring a younger twin.”
― On the Move: A Life
― On the Move: A Life
“I stayed, as always, at 37 Mapesbury, and on publication day my father came into my bedroom, pale and shaking, holding The Times in his hands. He said, fearfully, “You’re in the papers.” There was a very nice essay-review in the paper which called Migraine “balanced, authoritative, brilliant,” or something of the sort. But so far as my father was concerned, this made no difference; I had committed a grave impropriety, if not a criminal folly, by being in the papers. In those days, one might be struck off the Medical Register in England for any indulgence in “the four As”: alcoholism, addiction, adultery, or advertising; my father thought that a review of Migraine in the general press might be seen as advertising. I had gone public, made myself visible. He himself always had, or believed he had, a “low profile.” He was known to and beloved by his patients, family, and friends, but not to a wider world. I had crossed a boundary, transgressed, and he feared for me. This coincided with feelings I had had myself, and in those days I often misread the word “publish” as “punish.” I felt that I would be punished if I published anything, and yet I had to; this conflict almost tore me apart.”
― On the Move: A Life
― On the Move: A Life
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