Tillie Olsen Quotes

22 Sourced Quotes

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

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

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

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

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

Tillie Olsen
Only help her to know—help make it so there is cause for her to know—that she is more than this dress on the ironing board, helpless before the iron.

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

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

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

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

Tillie Olsen
Compared to men writers of like distinction and years of life, few women writers have had lives of unbroken productivity, or leave behind a 'body of work.' Early beginnings, then silence; or clogged late ones (foreground silences); long periods between books (hidden silences); characterize most of us.

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

Tillie Olsen
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.

Tillie Olsen
Motherhood means being instantly interruptible, responsive, responsible.

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

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

Tillie Olsen
The silences I speak of here are unnatural; the unnatural thwarting of what struggles to come into being, but cannot.

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

Tillie Olsen
Vinegar he poured on me all his life; I am well marinated; how can I be honey now?

Tillie Olsen
So all that is in her will not bloom — but in how many does it?

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

Tillie Olsen
Women are traditionally trained to place others' needs first... their satisfaction to be in making it possible for others to use their abilities.

Tillie Olsen