{"author":"Anna Kavan","author_id":"Anna+Kavan","total_quotes":18,"quotes":[{"text":"A human being can only endure depression up to a certain point; when this point of saturation is reached it becomes necessary for him to discover some element of pleasure, no matter how humble or on how low a level, in his environment if he is to go on living at all. In my case these insignificant birds with their subdued colourings have provided just sufficient distraction to keep me from total despair. Each day I find myself spending longer and longer at the window watching their flights, their quarrels, their mouse-quick flutterings, their miniature feuds and alliances. Curiously enough, it is only when I am standing in front of the window that I feel any sense of security. While I am watching the birds I believe that I am comparatively immune from the assaults of life. The very indifference to humanity of these wild creatures affords me a certain safeguard. Where all else is dangerous, hostile and liable to inflict pain, they alone can do me no injury because, probably, they are not even aware of my existence. The birds are at once my refuge and my relaxation.","author":"Anna Kavan","tags":["birds","depression","despair","distraction","refuge","relaxation","security"],"id":16103,"author_id":"Anna+Kavan"},{"text":"All at once I feel desperate, outraged. Why am I alone doomed to spend nights of torment, with an unseen jailer, when all the rest of the world sleeps peacefully? By what laws have I been tried and condemned, without my knowledge, and to such a heavy sentence, too, when I do not even know of what or by whom I have been indicted? A wild impulse comes to me to protest, to demand a hearing, to refuse to submit any longer to such injustice. But to whom can one appeal when one does not even know where to find the judge? How can one ever hope to prove one’s innocence when there is no means of knowing of what one has been accused? No, there’s no justice for people like us in the world: all that we can do is to suffer as bravely as possible and put our oppressors to shame.","author":"Anna Kavan","tags":["alone","condemned","desperate","doomed","injustice","suffering","torment"],"id":78252,"author_id":"Anna+Kavan"},{"text":"The sight of the wall of water outside reassured me, giving me the idea that it made very little difference whether I stayed with her, or set out alone on my journey that had neither visible starting point nor destination. It didn't matter: since, however closely I became involved with another existence, my own world would always remain secret, inaccessible and shut-off; nobody would ever see me, except as a dim, changeable, wavering shadow, through its impenetrable, semi-opaque walls.","author":"Anna Kavan","tags":["detachment","impenetrability","inner-life","journeys","solitude"],"id":86995,"author_id":"Anna+Kavan"},{"text":"The years passed like the steps of a staircase leading lower and lower. I did not walk any more in the sun or hear the songs of larks like crystal fountains playing against the sky. No hand enfolded mine in the warm clasp of love. My thoughts were again solitary, disintegrate, disharmonious – the music gone. I lived alone in a few pleasant rooms, feeling my life run out aimlessly with the tedious hours: the life of an old maid ran out of my fingertips.","author":"Anna Kavan","tags":["aimless","alone","disharmonious","disintegrate","loneliness","solitary","tedious","time"],"id":109299,"author_id":"Anna+Kavan"},{"text":"The last time she had seen him in the flesh, all the vital force of his life stripped away, his sharpened face had confronted her with such a fearful fixed finality of sightless indifference that she had been frozen in mortal terror, engulfed by abysmal despair. After all the years of unfailing support, his huge, inhuman, deaf, blind inaccessibility was horrifying. He had not kept his promise. He had abandoned her, left her to suffer alone.","author":"Anna Kavan","tags":["abandonment","loss"],"id":154495,"author_id":"Anna+Kavan"},{"text":"There are certain shocks which, if sufficiently strong, seem to have power to destroy the balance of life. Such a shock would seem to overthrow all the intricate, vital, slowly developed mechanism of mind, to plunge the victim into a chaotic half-world of confusion and loss. This is what had happened to Anna.","author":"Anna Kavan","tags":["loss","trauma"],"id":162867,"author_id":"Anna+Kavan"},{"text":"My ideas were confused. In a peculiar way, the unreality of the outer world appeared to be an extension of my own disturbed state of mind.","author":"Anna Kavan","tags":["confusion","disturbed","ice","unreal"],"id":171369,"author_id":"Anna+Kavan"},{"text":"But to whom can one appeal when one does not even know where to find the judge? How can one ever hope to prove one's innocence when there is no means of knowing of what one has been accused? No, there's no justice for people like us in the world: all that we can do is to suffer as bravely as possible and put our oppressors to shame.","author":"Anna Kavan","tags":["injustice","innocence","judge","justice"],"id":222924,"author_id":"Anna+Kavan"},{"text":"The day was ill-omened from the beginning; one of those unlucky days when every little detail seems to go wrong and one finds oneself engaged in a perpetual and infuriating strife with inanimate objects. How truly fiendish the sub-human world can be on these occasions! How every atom, every cell, every molecule, seems to be leagued in a maddening conspiracy against the unfortunate being who has incurred its obscure displeasure!","author":"Anna Kavan","tags":["bad-day","conspiracy","madness","strife"],"id":227799,"author_id":"Anna+Kavan"},{"text":"Her albino hair illuminated my dreams, shining brighter than moonlight.","author":"Anna Kavan","tags":["albino","dreams","hair","ice"],"id":294896,"author_id":"Anna+Kavan"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":18,"pages":2,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}