Quotes by 20th-century Women

Hyphens, like cats, are capable of arousing tenderness or shudders.

I am in a spot where I can neither be what I always am nor turn into what I could be.

We are Afropolitans: not citizens, but Africans of the world.

If the whiteness they pursue is cool and haughty and blank,
history is uncool, reaches out gawkily for affinities, asserts itself boldly,
threatens to mark, to break through and stain the primed white canvas
that is their life.
For, having primed it, they do not know where to start,
how to make a mark. They are alone in the world, a small new
island of whiteness. Or so they think; they do not know, or perhaps
they do not want to know, that the neighbourhood is full of people
like them. Thus they are steeped in its silence.

a question i have for whoever runs these sites—where do you get all these pictures from? i can't even tell where i was when i took most of these!

There are old riders and bold riders, but no old bold riders.

Why would scientists dedicated to uncovering the truth about the natural world deliberately misrepresent the work of their own colleagues? Why would they spread accusations with no basis? Why would they refuse to correct their arguments once they had been shown to be incorrect? And why did the press continue to quote them, year after year, even as their claims were shown, one after another, to be false?

I learned the hard way that just as I no longer have to save anyone, neither do I have to be saved.

People who refer to themselves as intellectuals are automatically commiting a social crime and, also, an error.

About his plans to run the London Marathon:

I've set myself a target. I'm going for less than eleven-and-a-half days.

Wait," I say. "I think you're mistaken. Saying there is no dream is the same as saying everything is a dream. Isn't it? Everyone's a dreamer? Extraordinary things happen all the time even when we're awake. What I meant to suggest to you, if indeed that was me in your dream doing the suggesting, is that there is only one world. This one. The dream is real. The ordinary is the wonderful. The wonderful is the ordinary.

Everything that I have told you is, of course, a fairy tale. Life is magical, after all. Nothing is safe and everything changes.

Trina Schart Hyman

The combination of song, prayer, and poetry is a natural form of expression for many Navajo people. A person who is able to 'talk beautifully' is well thought of and considered wealthy...

To the many reporters who had turned up at her lecture at Strathclyde University soon after her husband was jailed for perjury:

Good morning, and a special welcome to those of you who are new to the field of quantum solar energy conversion.

Witches try to 'connect' with the world around them. Witchcraft, they say, is about the tactile, intuitive understanding of the turn of the seasons, the song of the birds; it is the awareness of all things as holy...

Feminism is the most revolutionary idea there has ever been. Equality for women demands a change in the human psyche more profound than anything Marx dreamed of. It means valuing parenthood as much as we value banking.

We may have doubts, but we control the present. We always have the choice to move forward with hope and confidence.

When you can't see any reason for loving a person, you must be loving him as a symbol of something, don't you think so?

I have become post facto a representative of the country. So if you ask, "Is Mermaids a Canadian film?" — it has become one. It has become a means whereby people characterize Canadian film. I think in the creation of Mermaids, I did see it in political terms. I thought of the underdog. Canada is not a superpower by any means. It's very quietly, comfortably democratic, but it's plagued by a sense of inferiority.

Patricia Rozema

I like the pace of my world. It's busy, but for me, the less I do the lazier I get.

Powerful men often succeed through the help of their wives. Powerful women only succeed in spite of their husbands.

Lynda Lee-Potter

There is no gesture more devastating than the back turning away.

Little brown boy,
Slim, dark, big-eyed,
Crooning love songs to your banjo
Down at the Lafayette—Gee, boy, I love the way you hold your head,
High sort of and a bit to one side,
Like a prince, a jazz prince.

I see art-making, especially that which comes from the margins of the mainstream, as a site of resistance, a way of interrupting and intervening in those historical and cultural fields that continually exclude me, a sort of gathering of forces on the borders. For the dominant hegemonic stance that has worked to silence and subdue gender and ethnic difference has also silenced difference based on sexual preference.

Harmony Hammond

Yesterday people were permitted to change things. They will be permitted to advocate changing them tomorrow. It is only dangerous to think of changing anything today.

Elizabeth Hawes