Tillie Olsen Quotes

• Literary history and the present are dark with silences . . . I have had special need to learn all I could of this over the years, myself so nearly remaining mute and having to let writing die over and over again in me. These are not natural silences--what Keats called agonie ennuyeuse (the tedious agony)--that necessary time for renewal, lying fallow, gestation, in the natural cycle of creation. The silences I speak of here are unnatural: the unnatural thwarting of what struggles to come into being, but cannot.

  Tillie Olsen

  Lying, Struggle, Writing

  50 Copy quote

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

  Tillie Olsen

  Peace, Growing Up, Hands

  Tillie Olsen (2013). “Tell Me a Riddle, Requa I, and Other Works”, p.22, U of Nebraska Press

  35 Copy quote

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

  Tillie Olsen

  Mean, Motherhood, Responsible

  23 Copy quote

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

  Tillie Olsen

  Moving, Solitude, Rhythm

  Tillie Olsen (2013). “Tell Me a Riddle, Requa I, and Other Works”, p.60, U of Nebraska Press

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• The habits of a lifetime when everything else had to come before writing are not easily broken, even when circumstances now often make it possible for writing to be first; habits of years - responses to others, distractibility, responsibility for daily matters - stay with you, mark you, become you. The cost of discontinuity (that pattern still imposed on women) is such a weight of things unsaid, an accumulation of material so great, that everything starts up something else in me; what should take weeks take me sometimes months to write; what should take months, takes years.

  Tillie Olsen

  Writing, Responsibility, Years

  Tillie Olsen (2014). “Silences”, p.48, The Feminist Press at CUNY

  25 Copy quote

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

  Tillie Olsen

  Time, Time Management, Remember

  Tillie Olsen (1995). “Tell Me a Riddle”, p.278, Rutgers University Press

  19 Copy quote

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

  Tillie Olsen

  Reality, Aggravation, Surface

  Tillie Olsen (2014). “Silences”, p.45, The Feminist Press at CUNY

  24 Copy quote

• 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

  Book, Men, Years

  Tillie Olsen (2014). “Silences”, p.38, The Feminist Press at CUNY

  17 Copy quote

• Every woman who writes is a survivor.

  Tillie Olsen

  Writing, Survival, Survivor

  13 Copy quote

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

  Tillie Olsen

  Leaving, World, Want

  Source: progressive.org

  11 Copy quote

• 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.

  Tillie Olsen

  Skin Color, Dna, Race

  Source: progressive.org

  9 Copy quote

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

  Tillie Olsen

  Time, Scary, Scared

  Tillie Olsen (2013). “Tell Me a Riddle, Requa I, and Other Works”, p.8, U of Nebraska Press

  24 Copy quote

• Not to have an audience is a kind of death.

  Tillie Olsen

  Writing, Kind, Audience

  Tillie Olsen (2014). “Silences”, p.44, The Feminist Press at CUNY

  18 Copy quote

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

  Tillie Olsen

  Needs, Lifetime, Terrible

  Source: progressive.org

  16 Copy quote

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

  Tillie Olsen

  Daughter, Sea, Long

  Tillie Olsen (1995). “Tell Me a Riddle”, p.298, Rutgers University Press

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• Think about all that we've lost that has been said orally because nobody was taking it down. I feel very fortunate to live in a time where we have so many different voices. We have a much richer literature than we've ever had, and we can know America so much better.

  Tillie Olsen

  Thinking, Voice, America

  Source: progressive.org

  12 Copy quote

• Literature is a place for generosity and affection and hunger for equals - not a prizefight ring. We are increased, confirmed in our medium, roused to do our best, by every good writer, every fine achievement. Would we want one good writer or fine book less? The sense of writers being pitted against each other is bred primarily by the workings of the commercial marketplace, and by critics lauding one writer at the expense of another while ignoring the existence of nearly all.

  Tillie Olsen

  Book, Generosity, Achievement

  Tillie Olsen (2014). “Silences”, p.174, The Feminist Press at CUNY

  12 Copy quote

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

  Tillie Olsen

  Meditation, Toil, Distraction

  Tillie Olsen (2014). “Silences”, p.33, The Feminist Press at CUNY

  15 Copy quote

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

  Tillie Olsen

  Hurt, Cuss Words, Hurt Feelings

  Tillie Olsen (2013). “Tell Me a Riddle, Requa I, and Other Works”, p.31, U of Nebraska Press

  8 Copy quote

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

  Tillie Olsen

  Doe, Granted, Used

  Tillie Olsen (1995). “Tell Me a Riddle”, p.103, Rutgers University Press

  10 Copy quote

• Better immersion than to live untouched.

  Tillie Olsen

  Immersion

  Tillie Olsen (1995). “Tell Me a Riddle”, p.293, Rutgers University Press

  24 Copy quote

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

  Tillie Olsen

  Enough, Havens, Divides

  Tillie Olsen (2014). “Silences”, p.163, The Feminist Press at CUNY

  5 Copy quote

• The fact that human beings do not put up forever with misery, humiliation, degradation, actual physical deprivation but act is a fact which every human being should know about. We are a species that makes changes.

  Tillie Olsen

  Forever, Degradation, Facts

  Source: progressive.org

  7 Copy quote

• 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.

  Tillie Olsen

  Women, Blood, Religion

  Tillie Olsen (2013). “Tell Me a Riddle, Requa I, and Other Works”, p.46, U of Nebraska Press

  9 Copy quote

• 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

  Character, Special, Literature

  Tillie Olsen (1995). “Tell Me a Riddle”, p.96, Rutgers University Press

  4 Copy quote

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