Quotes from Carol Emshwiller

Stories do not change the world. I've learned that. But perhaps in some secret, subtle way... I mean it's not the world I want to change.

She makes a silent vow to be a vegetarian from now on even if she has to starve to do it. Better that than even the remote possibility of eating one's friends and fellow sufferers.

I always had plenty of ideas. I didn't exactly have them. They grew—little by little, a half an idea at a time. First, part of a phrase and then a person to go with it. After a person, then a little corner of a place for the person to be in.

Stories do not change the world. I've learned that. But perhaps in some secret, subtle way.... I mean it's not the world I want to change.

Whatever life brings, we'll share, she says, and I can do no more than the best I can.

May we all soon go about as our real selves and take joy in it, saying, yes, yes, to whatever we are.

Ah, but is it not the mind that is the real grace of Homo sapiens? All the things to think about! All the things to read and appreciate! All the arts! All the things of the spirit!

Maybe it's animalness that will make the world right again: the wisdom of elephants, the enthusiasm of canines, the grace of snakes, the mildness of anteaters. Perhaps being human needs some diluting. At any rate, how nice to be well dressed and among friends and in a state where poems pop out by themselves.

I shall love my kind of love anyway, doggedly, for I must certainly do the best I can with my own nature and if my nature is to love too well or from afar or to be grateful for crumbs...well, so be it.

He said, 'I like to see some spirit in my women. I like spunk and the fire in the eye. A woman like that is worth having,' but that was before I kicked him in the groin.

Keep on. The work of the world is always done by creatures too tired to do it.

The world looks so beautiful! She wonders how one can not do for it anything that needs to be done, or at least all one can do.

She tips back her head and howls: Moooooown! Oh wonderful moooooowwwwwyyyn!

It's American to be from somewhere else, and it's American to go from East to West. It's American to seek your fortune someplace other than where you are, or to be escaping something...

It has been a profitable three days. In the time to knit a fairly long scarf, I have learned about the universe.

I wanted a monument to myself in granite. I wanted my face in seven different colours. I wanted I LOVE YOU in giant red letters on top of the Museum of Modern Art. I wanted a new bridge across the Hudson in my name. I wanted a three-volume history of the Greeks dedicated to my memory. I wanted a filmed version of my life in Ektachrome Commercial. I wanted the Mercedes-Benz no longer to be for Mercedes. But I have small breasts.

When Gertrude Stein came to Ann Arbor, my mother said that all she said was, a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose. When Dylan Thomas came to Ann Arbor, my father said that he was a terrible man. And that is how I was brought up.

It is important and salutary to speak of incomprehensible things,' they said, and so we did till dawn.

I'll practice the new me in front of guests. I kind of like some of them, the guests. One has a soft, soft voice but I'm afraid he, too, may be practicing his new personality on me and that maybe he has trained himself with electric shock to his balls or some other place just as tender and soft, so that we are both living a lie.