Top 40 Anna Kavan Quotes (2024 Update)

Anna Kavan Quote: “When everything’s said and done, unfortunately, we find ourselves in the position of children whose parents have gone to the theatre, leaving them alone in the dark house. Yes, we are forced, if we are honest, to make the saddest of all admissions when it comes to the last resort: Alas, we do not understand these things.”

1. “When everything’s said and done, unfortunately, we find ourselves in the position of children whose parents have gone to the theatre, leaving them alone in the dark house. Yes, we are forced, if we are honest, to make the saddest of all admissions when it comes to the last resort: Alas, we do not understand these things.”

Anna Kavan Quote: “I know I’ve got a death wish. I’ve never enjoyed my life, I’ve never liked people. I love the mountains because they are the negation of life, indestructible, inhuman, untouchable, indifferent, as I want to be.”

2. “I know I’ve got a death wish. I’ve never enjoyed my life, I’ve never liked people. I love the mountains because they are the negation of life, indestructible, inhuman, untouchable, indifferent, as I want to be.”

Anna Kavan Quote: “I had a friend, a lover. Or did I dream it? So many dreams are crowding upon me now that I can scarcely tell true from false: dreams like light imprisoned in bright mineral caves; hot, heavy dreams; ice-age dreams; dreams like machines in the head.”

3. “I had a friend, a lover. Or did I dream it? So many dreams are crowding upon me now that I can scarcely tell true from false: dreams like light imprisoned in bright mineral caves; hot, heavy dreams; ice-age dreams; dreams like machines in the head.”

Anna Kavan Quote: “You mustn’t be so afraid of life – it’s all we’ve got. Don’t let it hurt you so much.”

4. “You mustn’t be so afraid of life – it’s all we’ve got. Don’t let it hurt you so much.”

Anna Kavan Quote: “I had a curious feeling that I was living on several planes simultaneously; the overlapping of these planes was confusing.”

5. “I had a curious feeling that I was living on several planes simultaneously; the overlapping of these planes was confusing.”

Anna Kavan Quote: “There is, I believe, a kind of telepathy between the condemned: a sort of intuitive recognition which can even make itself felt through the medium of the printed page. How else should I feel – without fear of appearing presumptuous, either – for this great man whom I never saw and to whom I could not have spoken, the tender, wincing, pathetic solicitude that painfully comes into being only between fellow-sufferers?”

6. “There is, I believe, a kind of telepathy between the condemned: a sort of intuitive recognition which can even make itself felt through the medium of the printed page. How else should I feel – without fear of appearing presumptuous, either – for this great man whom I never saw and to whom I could not have spoken, the tender, wincing, pathetic solicitude that painfully comes into being only between fellow-sufferers?”

Anna Kavan Quote: “Instead of my world, there would soon be only ice, snow, stillness, death; no more violence, no war, no victims; nothing but frozen silence, absence of life. The ultimate achievement of mankind would be, not just self-destruction, but the destruction of all life; the transformation of the living world into a dead planet.”

7. “Instead of my world, there would soon be only ice, snow, stillness, death; no more violence, no war, no victims; nothing but frozen silence, absence of life. The ultimate achievement of mankind would be, not just self-destruction, but the destruction of all life; the transformation of the living world into a dead planet.”

Anna Kavan Quote: “She was over-sensitive, highly strung, afraid of people and life; her personality had been damaged by a sadistic mother who kept her in a permanent state of frightened subjection.”

8. “She was over-sensitive, highly strung, afraid of people and life; her personality had been damaged by a sadistic mother who kept her in a permanent state of frightened subjection.”

Anna Kavan Quote: “She simply vanished, I suppose she’s entitled to go if she wants to – she’s free, white and twenty-one.”

9. “She simply vanished, I suppose she’s entitled to go if she wants to – she’s free, white and twenty-one.”

Anna Kavan Quote: “Everything was quiet, as if the silence was listening.”

10. “Everything was quiet, as if the silence was listening.”

Anna Kavan Quote: “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.”

11. “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.”

Anna Kavan Quote: “At last I feel identified with the mountains, clean, cold, hard, detached.”

12. “At last I feel identified with the mountains, clean, cold, hard, detached.”

Anna Kavan Quote: “Reality had always been something of an unknown quantity to me.”

13. “Reality had always been something of an unknown quantity to me.”

Anna Kavan Quote: “Hell had at least been familiar; she knew that, if she’d been capable of feeling anything, she would have felt afraid of this irresistible force that had picked her up like a scrap of paper and was sweeping her into the void, right out of the world as she knew it, as if whirling her off the earth altogether.”

14. “Hell had at least been familiar; she knew that, if she’d been capable of feeling anything, she would have felt afraid of this irresistible force that had picked her up like a scrap of paper and was sweeping her into the void, right out of the world as she knew it, as if whirling her off the earth altogether.”

Anna Kavan Quote: “Standing there, I had the feeling of putting on armour, taking up secret weapons, becoming like a dreamer, invulnerable for the moment – safe in my dream. Now I could face the world, having no part in life; the presence of waiting phantoms could be forgotten. I was outside everything, surrendered unconditionally to my dream, giving no thought to my next move, prepared to obey whatever impulse next reaches me from the unseen.”

15. “Standing there, I had the feeling of putting on armour, taking up secret weapons, becoming like a dreamer, invulnerable for the moment – safe in my dream. Now I could face the world, having no part in life; the presence of waiting phantoms could be forgotten. I was outside everything, surrendered unconditionally to my dream, giving no thought to my next move, prepared to obey whatever impulse next reaches me from the unseen.”

Anna Kavan Quote: “Because of my fear that the daytime world would become real, I had to establish reality in another place.”

16. “Because of my fear that the daytime world would become real, I had to establish reality in another place.”

Anna Kavan Quote: “I had never before met anyone who owned a telephone and believed in dragons.”

17. “I had never before met anyone who owned a telephone and believed in dragons.”

Anna Kavan Quote: “Below, the fjord was an impossible icy volcano erupting the baleful fire of the swallowed sun.”

18. “Below, the fjord was an impossible icy volcano erupting the baleful fire of the swallowed sun.”

Anna Kavan Quote: “Like people who from a bridge watch fish swimming below them, we saw the outside world as an alien element where we could take no part. Isolated behind the glass of our lonely window we looked down on the daily life which was not for us.”

19. “Like people who from a bridge watch fish swimming below them, we saw the outside world as an alien element where we could take no part. Isolated behind the glass of our lonely window we looked down on the daily life which was not for us.”

Anna Kavan Quote: “Like the dandelion clocks, all blown and dispersed on the wind, my life has evaporated into the emptiness of a dream; for which I blame my betrayer, that dubious stranger wearing the mask of a once-loved face.”

20. “Like the dandelion clocks, all blown and dispersed on the wind, my life has evaporated into the emptiness of a dream; for which I blame my betrayer, that dubious stranger wearing the mask of a once-loved face.”

Anna Kavan Quote: “Since he’d gone, the world had become unnervingly strange. There was nothing she could do and nowhere she could go. She felt lost, lonely, dazed, deprived of everything, even of her identity, which was not strong enough to survive without his constant encouragement and reassurance.”

21. “Since he’d gone, the world had become unnervingly strange. There was nothing she could do and nowhere she could go. She felt lost, lonely, dazed, deprived of everything, even of her identity, which was not strong enough to survive without his constant encouragement and reassurance.”

Anna Kavan Quote: “The men’s tanned faces, the faces of the women, bright with cosmetics, all suddenly appeared similar, as though wearing identical masks; hard, smiling, decorative, devoid of feeling. Not one of the seemed capable of expressing affection or pity or any of the softer emotions. They frightened her, these gay, hard, animated, worldly masks; she would always be a stranger among them, lost, ill-at-ease, out of place.”

22. “The men’s tanned faces, the faces of the women, bright with cosmetics, all suddenly appeared similar, as though wearing identical masks; hard, smiling, decorative, devoid of feeling. Not one of the seemed capable of expressing affection or pity or any of the softer emotions. They frightened her, these gay, hard, animated, worldly masks; she would always be a stranger among them, lost, ill-at-ease, out of place.”

Anna Kavan Quote: “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.”

23. “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.”

Anna Kavan Quote: “All I wanted then was for everything to go on as before, so that I could stay deeply asleep, and be no more than a hole in space, not here or anywhere at all, for as long as possible, preferably forever.”

24. “All I wanted then was for everything to go on as before, so that I could stay deeply asleep, and be no more than a hole in space, not here or anywhere at all, for as long as possible, preferably forever.”

Anna Kavan Quote: “Reality had always been something of an unknown quantity to me. At times this could be disturbing.”

25. “Reality had always been something of an unknown quantity to me. At times this could be disturbing.”

Anna Kavan Quote: “The past had vanished and become nothing; the future was the inconceivable nothingness of annihilation. All that was left was the ceaselessly shrinking fragment of time called ‘now’.”

26. “The past had vanished and become nothing; the future was the inconceivable nothingness of annihilation. All that was left was the ceaselessly shrinking fragment of time called ‘now’.”

Anna Kavan Quote: “Perhaps I am the victim of some mysterious political, religious or financial machination – some vast and shadowy plot, whose ramifications are so obscure as to appear to the uninitiated to be quite outside reason, requiring, for instance, something as apparently senseless as the destruction of everybody with red hair or with a mole on his left leg.”

27. “Perhaps I am the victim of some mysterious political, religious or financial machination – some vast and shadowy plot, whose ramifications are so obscure as to appear to the uninitiated to be quite outside reason, requiring, for instance, something as apparently senseless as the destruction of everybody with red hair or with a mole on his left leg.”

Anna Kavan Quote: “Her life was shameful and lonely. There was no longer any hope for her, there was no chance of escape. Yet, in spite of her humiliation and the despair which possessed her, she still remained in some part of her soul aloof and untouched. It was the hard centre of her being which never altered. Nothing could touch that.”

28. “Her life was shameful and lonely. There was no longer any hope for her, there was no chance of escape. Yet, in spite of her humiliation and the despair which possessed her, she still remained in some part of her soul aloof and untouched. It was the hard centre of her being which never altered. Nothing could touch that.”

Anna Kavan Quote: “It was as though I had parted company all at once with my usual reasoning self, which had withdrawn into the shadows, leaving me no means of communicating with it; while another “I” took command, functioning at a different, more mysterious level, where all outer appearances were deceptive, and even the thoughts in my head shot with ambiguity.”

29. “It was as though I had parted company all at once with my usual reasoning self, which had withdrawn into the shadows, leaving me no means of communicating with it; while another “I” took command, functioning at a different, more mysterious level, where all outer appearances were deceptive, and even the thoughts in my head shot with ambiguity.”

Anna Kavan Quote: “It’s lonely? Sure, it’s lonely. That’s what you asked for, didn’t you? After all, if you hadn’t been too superior for the gang, you wouldn’t be here. And think how much more distinguished it is to be on your own, or with one or two individualists like yourself, than to be an ordinary gregarious animal going about with the herd.”

30. “It’s lonely? Sure, it’s lonely. That’s what you asked for, didn’t you? After all, if you hadn’t been too superior for the gang, you wouldn’t be here. And think how much more distinguished it is to be on your own, or with one or two individualists like yourself, than to be an ordinary gregarious animal going about with the herd.”

Anna Kavan Quote: “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.”

31. “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.”

Anna Kavan Quote: “The cold mornings open their eyes to glare at you one after another, like hostile strangers.”

32. “The cold mornings open their eyes to glare at you one after another, like hostile strangers.”

Anna Kavan Quote: “And suddenly the idea comes into your head that perhaps now, at this very moment while you are passing by, in one of the rooms behind those drab shutters, at a worm-eaten desk, among bundles of papers tied up with red or green tape, with scratchy old-fashioned penstrokes, your fate is being inscribed.”

33. “And suddenly the idea comes into your head that perhaps now, at this very moment while you are passing by, in one of the rooms behind those drab shutters, at a worm-eaten desk, among bundles of papers tied up with red or green tape, with scratchy old-fashioned penstrokes, your fate is being inscribed.”

Anna Kavan Quote: “The whole room is as black as pitch. In fact, I’m not at all sure that it is a room. Something suggests to me now that I’m on board ship; I might be floating adrift on some tranquil sea. And yet there’s no sound, no motion, nothing to indicate either sea or land. Like a ghost train my life streams through my head, and I don’t know which point of the compass I’m facing. How dark it is. The moon must have stolen away secretly.”

34. “The whole room is as black as pitch. In fact, I’m not at all sure that it is a room. Something suggests to me now that I’m on board ship; I might be floating adrift on some tranquil sea. And yet there’s no sound, no motion, nothing to indicate either sea or land. Like a ghost train my life streams through my head, and I don’t know which point of the compass I’m facing. How dark it is. The moon must have stolen away secretly.”

Anna Kavan Quote: “Wherever she looked, she saw the same fearful encirclement, soaring battlements of ice, an overhanging ring of frigid, fiery, colossal waves about to collapse upon her.”

35. “Wherever she looked, she saw the same fearful encirclement, soaring battlements of ice, an overhanging ring of frigid, fiery, colossal waves about to collapse upon her.”

Anna Kavan Quote: “Night is the worst time, when her vitality sinks to its lowest ebb and she’s frightened of everything. Unable to read or do anything else, she wanders about the house like a woman living with ghosts, who can’t find the way or the will to return to the living world.”

36. “Night is the worst time, when her vitality sinks to its lowest ebb and she’s frightened of everything. Unable to read or do anything else, she wanders about the house like a woman living with ghosts, who can’t find the way or the will to return to the living world.”

Anna Kavan Quote: “You don’t like it here? Why didn’t you keep out, then, for God’s sake, while you had the chance? Anyhow, it’s no good moaning and snivelling now. Put a good face on it. Be tough. Show the crowd you can take it. You’re an individualist, aren’t you? To hell with the crowd. What do you care about them? You’re here because you’ve got no time for the crowd. What do you care about them and their damnfool heaven? To hell with heaven, anyway.”

37. “You don’t like it here? Why didn’t you keep out, then, for God’s sake, while you had the chance? Anyhow, it’s no good moaning and snivelling now. Put a good face on it. Be tough. Show the crowd you can take it. You’re an individualist, aren’t you? To hell with the crowd. What do you care about them? You’re here because you’ve got no time for the crowd. What do you care about them and their damnfool heaven? To hell with heaven, anyway.”

Anna Kavan Quote: “It was the summer, and Clare Bryant was happy. In the midst of the world which seemed so vast and dangerous to her, so full of change and precariousness, she had found one enduring rock to which her thin arms could cling.”

38. “It was the summer, and Clare Bryant was happy. In the midst of the world which seemed so vast and dangerous to her, so full of change and precariousness, she had found one enduring rock to which her thin arms could cling.”

Anna Kavan Quote: “To speak of the catastrophe was an offense under the new regulations. The rule was to choose not to know. Remembering how I myself had wished to forget on another occasion, I understood the euphoric blindness without condoning it.”

39. “To speak of the catastrophe was an offense under the new regulations. The rule was to choose not to know. Remembering how I myself had wished to forget on another occasion, I understood the euphoric blindness without condoning it.”

Anna Kavan Quote: “It seemed to me we were fighting against the ice, which was all the while coming steadily nearer, covering more of the world with its dead silence, its awful white peace. By making war we asserted the fact that we were alive and opposed the icy death creeping over the globe.”

40. “It seemed to me we were fighting against the ice, which was all the while coming steadily nearer, covering more of the world with its dead silence, its awful white peace. By making war we asserted the fact that we were alive and opposed the icy death creeping over the globe.”

Anna Kavan Quote: “In this nameless place nothing appears animate, nothing is close, nothing is real; I am pursued by the remembered scent of dust sprinkled with summer rain.”

41. “In this nameless place nothing appears animate, nothing is close, nothing is real; I am pursued by the remembered scent of dust sprinkled with summer rain.”

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