Justice & Law Quote by Janet Frame

When things get dire, Frame suggests, the mind starts scavenging. “The law of extremity” sounds almost judicial, as if crisis carries its own statute book: in moments of pressure, you don’t get to choose what commands your attention. What’s “irrelevant” becomes compulsory, not because it matters in any rational hierarchy, but because it’s usable - a splinter of detail you can hold onto when the larger world is too hot to touch.

Frame’s phrasing is slyly clinical. “Demands” turns distraction into obligation; “attention” makes it feel disciplined, even studious. The line captures a recognizable psychology: when grief, fear, or institutional control closes in, people fixate on trivia (a crack in a wall, the exact wording of a note, the ritual of making tea) as a way to reclaim agency. Irrelevance becomes a survival tactic, a tiny pocket of autonomy inside circumstances that won’t negotiate.

Context matters with Frame. Her work is haunted by the experience of misrecognition - by systems (medical, social, familial) that label, sort, and confine. In that light, “irrelevance” can also read as a quiet rebellion against official narratives of what counts. Under extremity, the sanctioned “relevant” story is often the one imposed on you. Attending to the supposedly minor may be how you preserve the self that institutions and emergencies try to erase.

The sentence works because it refuses comfort. It doesn’t romanticize resilience; it anatomizes it. In Frame’s world, coping isn’t always courageous. Sometimes it’s meticulous, odd, and stubbornly beside the point.