We invent them, I said to Harry

[breathedout]

We invent them, I said to Harry, the people we love and hate. We project our feelings onto other people, but there is always a dynamic that creates those inventions. The fantasies are made between people, and the ideas about those people live inside us.

“Yes,” she said, “and even after they die, they are still there. I am made of the dead.”

—Siri Hustvedt, The Blazing World (narrator Rachel Briefman)