Quotes by 20th-century Women

A poem is a box, a thing, to put other things in. For safe keeping.

Marianne Boruch

What is it with folks always talking about where they're from? You could grow up in a muddy ditch, but if it's your muddy ditch, then it's gotta be the swellest muddy ditch ever.

Jennifer L. Holm

Virtually all native cultures that have survived without fouling their nests have acknowledged that nature knows best, and have had the humility to ask the bears and wolves and ravens and redwoods for guidance.

Now is a time for, dare I say it, kindness. I thought being extremely smart would take care of it. But I see I have been found out.

Let us agree that we are marrying so we can go on quarrelling in the greatest possible comfort and convenience.

If making sure that workers get out of poverty would severely impact the economy, then maybe we don't need this economy.

How about "diamonds are a girl's best friends"? Nope. It should be switched around and pointed out, instead, that your best friends are diamonds.

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.

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...

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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!

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.

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

A man deserves credit when he accomplishes something of importance. Something that provides for the betterment of his life and his family's life and, whenever possible, mankind.

Louis Althusser puts it this way: because "class instinct is subjective and spontaneous," the class instinct of the middle classes and "thus of intellectuals" must undergo a painful and "revolutionary" transformation in order to become oppositional—that is, in order to become aligned with the methodology of the oppressed.

And off in the far distance, the gold on the wings of the angel atop the bell tower of San Marco flashed in the sun, bathing the entire city in its glistening benediction.

Setting off unknown to face the unknown, against parental opposition, with no money, friends, or influence, ran it a close second. Clichés like "blazing trails," flying over "shark-infected seas," "battling with monsoons," and "forced landings amongst savage tribes" became familiar diet for breakfast. Unknown names became household words, whilst others, those of the failures, were forgotten utterly except by kith and kin.

When anything becomes the fashion, that's the time to put a bomb under it.

Joan Littlewood

For your information, I am NOT overreacting. I'm REACTING. That's different. It's important to react when you're pissed off.

Your medicine is your poison is your medicine is your poison and there is no end but madness.