Tamara Faith Berger Quotes & Sayings

I think that it's a space that there are a lot of projections onto - the soon-to-be sexualized and already-sexualized young woman. There are so many outside perceptions grafted onto her, that she feels all at once completely blank and completely full. I noticed that a lot in your book, as well, this repetition of a shallowness. But there is also depth in the constant repetition of this shallowness. — Tamara Faith Berger

At the beach, college girls lay in groups on the sand around buckets of drinks, their bums curved up like fruits. Mine didn't do that. — Tamara Faith Berger

My mother kept calling me out of myself. She wanted to show me a picture, the first picture from the slave-ship exhibition. 'This is unbelievable,' she said. 'Myra, you have to see this, this is unbelievable.' I cringed at how fast she was talking. Why unbelievable? This all actually happened! Why is this all so hard to believe? — Tamara Faith Berger

The slave's self-consciousness, according to Hegel, not the master's, sublates into Absolute Knowledge.
This was changing everything for me. Sublation meant cancelling out and preservation; both, together, at the same time. You could get rid of something and protect it too. I realized that I wanted to sublate myself to Elijah. I wanted to be consumed by him and elevated by him and preserved in the process. I didn't know how to do this. This didn't seem inevitable. Did I have to struggle to the death? — Tamara Faith Berger

All men think that a woman walking alone at night is a whore. — Tamara Faith Berger

But maybe when you never say a thing, your thoughts spread like mould. — Tamara Faith Berger

And then women will fuck men instead of men fucking them. And then this place can be burned to the ground. — Tamara Faith Berger

My essay had evolved into thinking about fucking. You could be raped a thousand times and still be a virgin. I was writing about fucking by a master and fucking as a slave, about Hegel, the comfort women and teenage porno stars. Ms. Bain and Mr. Rotowsky could fail me, I didn't care. I'd pass just with the bibliography. I was compiling a list of every single book I'd read or that I wanted to read that was about power and sex. High school should have a whole fucking course on just this. I was helping the school make curriculum ...
I was writing my essay, writing easily now. I didn't have a reader anymore like Lee or Chris but I imagined that I was writing for them both. Maybe I was writing for anyone who could fucking stand me. — Tamara Faith Berger

I'd be more open than a book too. My spine would crack, I'd fall out in halves. — Tamara Faith Berger

I was thinking: Girls get scared way too often. Girls get stupidly scared. I was not scared.
Telling myself not to be scared kind of worked. — Tamara Faith Berger

According to Hegel, the slave fully acknowledges the self-consciousness of the master and she dissolves herself or upholds herself as their relationship dictates and evolves to the struggle unto death. Although this struggle is a failure, according to Hegel, if someone actually dies. — Tamara Faith Berger

Masochism seemed to make sense to me in terms of the struggle for self-consciousness of the slave in the struggle unto death.
'I feel like sex, I mean, giving myself, helps me. Giving my whole self to someone until I forget who I am helps me deal with my problems. — Tamara Faith Berger