Asylum Piece
Anna Kavan
Top 10 Best Quotes
“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!”
“I know that I'm doomed and I'm not going to struggle against my fate. I am only writing this down so that when you do not see me any more you will know that my enemy has finally triumphed.”
“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.”
“In a polished surface of metal I happen to notice my reflected face; it wears a pale, beaten lonely look, eyes looking out at nothing with an expression of fear, frightened and lonely in a nightmare world. Something, I don’t know what, makes me think of my childhood; I remember myself as a schoolchild sitting at a hard wooden desk, and then as a little girl with thick, fair, wind-tossed hair, feeding the swans in a park. And it seems both strange and sad to me that all those childish years were spent in preparation for this – that, forgotten by everybody, with a beaten face, I should serve machinery in a place far away from the sun.”
“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.”
“Yet though there is no visible barrier I know only too well that I am surrounded by unseen and impassable walls which tower into the highest domes of the zenith and sink many miles below the surface of the earth.”
“To wait - only to wait - without even the final merciful deprivation of hope. Sometimes I think that some secret court must have tried and condemned me, unheard, to this heavy sentence.”
“There is some quite trivial, distant noise; a sound, moreover, which has nothin to do with me, to which there is not the slightest need for me to pay any attention; yet it suffices to wake me, and in no gentle way, either, but savagely, violently, shockingly, like an air raid alarm. The wheels, my masters, are already vibrating with incipient motion; the whole mechanism is preparing to begin the monotonous, hateful functioning of which I am the dispirited slave. I began to feel that if I did not succeed in breaking out of the loathsome circle I should suddenly become mad, scream, perpetrate some shocking act of violence in the open street. But worst of all was the knowledge that the laws of my temperament would forbid me even a relief of this kind. I was inexorably imprisoned behind my own determination to display no emotion whatever. Now I saw that I was in a street which I did not know very well. Night had fallen, the lights glowed mistily through a thin haze. It was as though, in some mysterious way, I had become the central point around which the night scene revolved. People walking on the pavement looked at me as they passed. Some with pity, some with detached interest, some with more morbid curiosity. Some appeared to make small, concealed sights, but whether these were intended for warning or encouragement I could not be sure. The windows lighted or unlighted, were like eyes more or less piercing, but all focused upon me. The houses, the traffic, everything in sight, seemed to be watching to see what I would do. To wait — with no living soul in whom to confide one's doubt, one's fears, one's relentless hope. Some secret court must have tried and condemned me, unheard, to this heavy sentence. Coiling itself round me it knows I cannot escape. Imprisoned in its very fabric, I am like a small worm, a parasite, which the host harbors not altogether unwillingly. 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.”
“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.”
“The note of almost unbearable irritation sounding through the deliberately calm tone in which he has just spoken penetrates her child's heart like a cruel needle of ice. Her face falls grotesquely, her mouth trembles, tears - the sudden, despairing tears of a hurt child - fill her eyes to the brim.”
Except where otherwise noted, all rights reserved to the author(s) of this book (mentioned above). The content of this page serves solely as promotional material for the aforementioned book. If you enjoyed these quotes, you can support the author(s) by acquiring the full book from Amazon.
Book Keywords:
pessimism, security, loneliness, relaxation, fatalism, depression, justice, solitary, sad, defences, time, fate, nightmare, conspiracy, innocence, lonely, disintegrate, strife, beaten, strange, impenetrability, fear, birds, tedious, forgotten, disharmonious, alienation, bad-day, distraction, aimless, refuge, childhood, judge, reflection, madness, alone, enemy, despair, frightened, injustice
