Tove Ditlevsen - Childhood
by mapogatari · 7 things on Twos
- 13 “my relationship with her [mother] is close, painful, and shaky, and I always have to keep searching for a sign of love. Everything I do, I do to please her, to make her smile, to ward off her fury. This work is extremely exhausting because at the same time I have to hide so many things from her.”
- 16 “I know every person has their own truth just as every child has their own childhood.”
- 27 the idea that childhood is a scent that sticks with you; you can't recognize your own, but you smell it on everyone you meet
- 58 “I know that you sometimes have to lie in order to bring out the truth.”
- 94 "It bothers me a lot that I don't seem to own any real feelings anymore, but always have to pretend that I do by copying other people's reactions. It's as if I'm only moved by things that come to me indirectly. I can cry when I see a picture in the newspaper of an unfortunate family that's been evicted, but when I see the same ordinary sight in reality, it doesn't touch me. I'm moved by poetry and lyrical prose, now as always—but the things that are described leave me completely cold. I don't think very much of reality."
- 99 "I read in my poetry album while the night wanders past the window—and, unawares, my childhood falls silently to the bottom of my memory, that library of the soul from which I will draw knowledge and experience for the rest of my life."
- 1967