Date: Summer, 1991

"Elinor has constructed herself in this way around an original lack: the absentation of her sister, and perhaps in the first place the withholding from herself of the love of their mother, whom she then compulsively unites with Marianne, the favorite, in the love-drenched tableaux of her imaginat...

— Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky (1950-2009)

Date: Summer, 1991

"Elinor's pupils, those less tractable sphincters of the soul, won't close against the hapless hemorrhaging of her visual attention-flow toward Marianne; it is this, indeed, that renders her consciousness, in turn, habitable, inviting, and formative to readers as 'point-of-view.'"

— Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky (1950-2009)

Date: 2003

"In fact, it seems quite plausible that some version of this axiom (perhaps 'Even a paranoid can have enemies,' uttered by Henry Kissinger) is so indelibly inscribed in the brains of baby boomers that it offers us the continuing illusion of possessing a special insight into the epistemologies of ...

— Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky (1950-2009)