A Quote by Bernard of Clairvaux
Nothing can work me damage except myself. The harm that I sustain I carry about with me, and never am a real sufferer but by my own fault.
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Nothing can work damage to me except myself; the harm that I sustain I carry about with me and never am a real sufferer except by my own fault.
For years and years, I convinced myself that I was unbreakable, an animal with an animal strength or something not human at all. Me, I told people, I take damage like a wall, a brick wall that never falls down, never feels anything, never flinches or remembers. I am one woman but I carry in my body all the stories I have ever been told, women I have known, women who have taken damage until they tell themselves they can feel no pain at all.
That is my morality or my metaphysics or me myself: a passer-by in everything, even my own soul. I belong to nothing, I desire nothing, I am nothing except an abstract centre of impersonal sensations, a sentient mirror fallen from the wall but still turned to reflect the diversity of the world.
I have nothing but myself to write about, no facts, no theories, no opinions, no adventures, no sentiments, nothing but my own poor barren individualism, of considerable interest to me, but I do not know why I should presume it will be so to you. Egotism is not tiresome, or it ought not to be, if one is sincere about oneself; but it is so hard to be sincere. Well, never mind, I mean to be, and you know me well enough to see through me when I am humbugging.
I am God, and all other gods are my imagery. I gave birth to myself. I am millions of forms excreating; eternal; and nothing exists except through me; yet I am not them they serve me.
Nothing has been more detrimental to me than to be considered a symbol, because I never stood for any of that... The civil rights movement thought they would do me harm over the years by disassociating themselves from me. Well, nothing in the world was more to my advantage. I was never one of them... I had my own divine mission.
Never let me hear you say it's someone else's fault. It often is, but you must never shirk your own responsibility ... You can't change others, but you can do something about a fault in yourself.
Because You have called me here not to wear a label by which I can recognize myself and place myself in some kind of a category. You do not want me to be thinking about what I am, but about what You are. Or rather, You do not even want me to be thinking about anything much: for You would raise me above the level of thought. And if I am always trying to figure out what I am and where I am and why I am, how will that work be done?
Perhaps what I am about to say will appear strange to you gentlemen, socialists, progressives, humanitarians as you are, but I never worry about my neighbor, I never try to protect society which does not protect me -- indeed, I might add, which generally takes no heed of me except to do me harm -- and, since I hold them low in my esteem and remain neutral towards them, I believe that society and my neighbor are in my debt.
Nothing I accept about myself can be used against me to diminish me. I am who I am, doing what I came to do, acting upon you like a drug or a chisel to remind you of your me-ness, as I discover you in myself.
I have no sense of direction; I never know where I am. When I back up a car, I'm more likely to hit what's behind me than not, because I have no vision for it. I've never been able to play games or play cards because I can't in my head get the next move. I've never been able to balance a checkbook. So there's some brain damage, but it may be that very brain damage that allows me to do the work I do. I've never met a cartoonist who isn't quirky or weird in some ways.
My importance to the world is relatively small. On the other hand, my importance to myself is tremendous. I am all I have to work with, to play with, to suffer and to enjoy. It is not the eyes of others that I am wary of, but of my own. I do not intend to let myself down more than I can possibly help, and I find that the fewer illusions I have about myself or the world around me, the better company I am for myself.
But I believe the words entered me and changed me and still work in me. The words eat me and sustain me. And when I'm dead and in a box in the dark dark ground, and all my various souls have died and I am nothing but insensible bones, something in the marrow will still feel yearning, desire persisting beyond flesh.
With longevity comes, 'Nothing is going to kill me; I cannot irreparably damage my career.' Those days are over. The most I can sustain are fender benders.
I have never painted a self-portrait. I am less interested in myself as a subject for a painting than I am in other people, above all women... There is nothing special about me. I am a painter who paints day after day from morning to night... Who ever wants to know something about me... ought to look carefully at my pictures.
That's something I have to work on: to separate what really matters, to conserve energy by not worrying about what other people think. When I walk through that door, it's about home. If I didn't do that, I'd become consumed by one thing only and damage the people who love me. And it would damage the work.
