This is something that the novel does better than any other art form: reproducing the inner life and the inner experience of another person, particularly extreme forms of consciousness like grief, dreams, drunkenness, spiritual revelations, even insanity. Unlike movies, where we're always onlookers, in novels we have the experience of being someone else: knowing another person's soul from the inside. No other art form does that. And I like dealing with particularly intense inner experiences because I think that in many ways, this is what the novel does best.
Donna TarttRelated topics
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... And I, who timidly hate life, fear death with fascination. I fear this nothingness that could be something else, and I fear it as nothing and as something else simultaneously, as if gross horror and non-existence could coincide there, as if my coffin could entrap the eternal breathing of a bodily soul, as if immortality could be tormented by confinement. The idea of hell, which only a satanic soul could have invented seems to me to have derived from this sort of confusion - a mixture of two different fears that contradict and contaminate each other.
Fernando Pessoa
I hear Republicans and Libertarians and so forth talking about property rights, but they stop talking about property rights as soon as the subject of American Indians comes up, because they know fully well, perhaps not in a fully articulated, conscious form, but they know fully well that the basis for the very system of endeavor and enterprise and profitability to which they are committed and devoted accrues on the basis of theft of the resources of someone else. They are in possession of stolen property. They know it. They all know it. It's a dishonest endeavor from day one.
Ward Churchill
Once, when I was younger, I thought I could be someone else. I'd move to Casablanca, open a bar, and I'd meet Ingrid Bergman. Or more realistically - whether actually more realistic or not - I'd tune in on a better life, something more suited to my true self. Toward that end, I had to undergo training. I read The Greening of America, and I saw Easy Rider three times. But like a boat with a twisted rudder, I kept coming back to the same place. I wasn't anywhere. I was myself, waiting on the shore for me to return.
Haruki Murakami
If someone is frequently under attack by negative entities, it is because of a polluted consciousness that needs to be upgraded. A negative entity dislikes visiting a clean mind as much as a rat dislikes going to a clean place. [...] Putting up spiritual paraphernalia around the home and not allowing any negative activity to go on in the environment can help you greatly. This may mean asking friends and loved ones to refrain from drinking, smoking, taking drugs, gossiping, or doing any activity that does not encourage spiritual thought and action.
Bhakti Tirtha Swami
There is beauty as well as danger when you deal with the subtle realms. The beauty is that you can have realizations, revelations, and experiences that can carry over into the waking state. The danger is that you can expose yourself to negative influences. There are many positive as well as negative entities that infiltrate one's consciousness while dreaming or disturb one during astral travel. Often they appear in the form of family members or close friends. There are also beings on the subtle plane that are in the habit of engaging the sleeping person in unwanted sexual activity.
Bhakti Tirtha Swami