Kristina

“Bet ar tikrai tankai svarbesni už kriaušes? Ilgainiui Kare­las ėmė suprasti, kad atsakymas į šį klausimą ne toks aki­vaizdus, kaip jis visada manė, ir slapčia širdyje ėmė pritarti mamos vaizdiniui: didžiulė kriaušė pirmame plane ir kaž­kur toli toli - tankas, ne ką didesnis už boružėlę, pasirengu­sią bet kurią akimirką pakilti į orą ir dingti iš akių. Na taip, mama iš tikrųjų teisi: tankas mirtingas, o kriaušė amžina.”
― Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting

“Notwithstanding his occasional illusions of omnipotence, the narcissist depends on others to validate his self-esteem. He cannot live without an admiring audience. His apparent freedom from family ties and institutional constraints does not free him to stand alone or to glory in his individuality. On the contrary, it contributes to his insecurity, which he can overcome only by seeing his “grandiose self” reflected in the attentions of others, or by attaching himself to those who radiate celebrity, power, and charisma. For the narcissist, the world is a mirror, whereas the rugged individualist saw it as an empty wilderness to be shaped to his own design.”
― Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in An Age of Diminishing Expectations

“Važiavau ne tomis pačiomis gatvėmis, kuriomis vaikščiojo tądien praeiviai, o slidžia, liūdna ir švelnia praeitim. Beje, ji buvo sudaryta iš šitiekos skirtingų praeičių, kad man buvo sunku suvokti savo liūdesio priežastį <...>.”
― Marcel Proust

“The Greek myth of Narcissus is directly concerned with a fact of human experi­ence, as the word Narcissus indicates. It is from the Greek word narcosis, or numb­ness. The youth Narcissus mistook his own reflection in the water for another person. This extension of himself by mirror numbed his perceptions until he became the servomechanism of his own extended or repeated image. The nymph Echo tried to win his love with fragments of his own speech, but in vain. He was numb. He had adapted to his extension of himself and had become a closed system.

Now the point of this myth is the fact that men at once become fascinated by any extension of themselves in any ma­terial other than themselves. There have been cynics who insisted that men fall deep­est in love with women who give them back their own image. Be that as it may, the wisdom of the Narcissus myth does not convey any idea that Narcissus fell in love with anything he regarded as himself. Obviously he would have had very different feelings about the image had he known it was an extension or repetition of himself. It is, perhaps, indicative of the bias of our intensely technological and, therefore, narcotic culture that we have long interpreted the Narcissus story to mean that he fell in love with himself, that he imagined the reflection to be Narcissus!”
― Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man