Tillie Olsen - Silences (1978)

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

Tillie Olsen

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

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

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

Tillie Olsen

Motherhood means being instantly interruptible, responsive, responsible.

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

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