Tillie Olsen Quotes

That's what I want to be when I grow up, just a peaceful wreck holding hands with other peaceful wrecks.

Women have the right to say: this is surface, this falsifies reality, this degrades.

The clock talked loud. I threw it away, it scared me what it talked.

More than in any other human relationship, overwhelmingly more, motherhood means being instantly interruptible, responsive, and responsible

Better immersion than to live untouched.

She would not exchange her solitude for anything. Never again to be forced to move to the rhythms of others.

It is a long baptism into the seas of humankind, my daughter. Better immersion than to live untouched.

And when is there time to remember, to sift, to weigh, to estimate, to total?

Not to have an audience is a kind of death.

It's hard for me to talk about the terrible things that have happened in my lifetime because they didn't need to be.

It is distraction, not meditation, that becomes habitual; interruption, not continuity; spasmodic, not constant toil.

Every woman who writes is a survivor.

I don't want to die leaving the world as it is right now.

Time granted does not necessarily coincide with time that can be most fully used.

I very much dislike the word "race," and I never use it. I use the word "racist." Race is not a fact. There is only one race: human. Skin color is less than 2 percent of the DNA.

Not everybody feels religion the same way. Some it's in their mouth, but some it's like a hope in their blood, their bones.

There are worse words than cuss-words, there are words that hurt.

I know that I haven’t powers enough to divide myself into one who earns and one who creates.

I could not live by literature if only to begin with, because of the slow maturing of my work and its special character.

Better mankind born without mouths and stomachs than always to worry about money to buy, to shop, to fix, to cook, to wash, to clean.

Lighting does occasionally strike and occasional the result isn't a corpse.

Writers in a profit making economy are an exploitable commodity whose works are products to be marketed, and are so judged and handled.

I know that I haven't powers enough to divide myself into one who earns and one who creates.

There are worse words than cuss words there are words that hurt.