‘Vertigo is anguish to the extent that I am afraid not of falling over the precipice, but of throwing myself over.’
Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness (1943)
‘[V]ertigo is something other than the fear of falling. It is the voice of the emptiness below us which tempts and lures us, it is the desire to fall, against which, terrified, we defend ourselves.’
Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1985)
‘Every form of vertigo goes with a particular form of pleasure.’
Danielle Quinodoz, Emotional Vertigo (1994)
‘…the sense of vertigo, almost of panic, that traverses all contemporary politics arises owing to the fact that the ground is giving way beneath everyone’s feet at once, as if we are all felt attacked everywhere, in our habits and in our possessions.’