TOTillie Olsen

6 collected words

Tillie Olsen

Dates not recorded

Name supplied in the contributor-provided quotation collection. Basic attribution label; identity, lifetime and quotation authenticity have not been independently verified.

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Quotations and sayings

01Undated

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 / quote

02Undated

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

Tillie Olsen / quote

03Undated

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

Tillie Olsen / quote

04Undated

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

Tillie Olsen / quote

05Undated

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

Tillie Olsen / quote

06Undated

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

Tillie Olsen / quote