Quotes from Tillie Olsen

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

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.

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

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

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

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

It is a long Baptism into the seas of humankind, my daughter. Better immersion and in pain than to live untouched. Yet how will you sustain?

But there is more – to rebel against what will not let life be.

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

What in me demanded that goodness in her? And what was the cost, the cost to her of such goodness?

She kept too much in herself. Her life was such that she had to keep too much in herself. My wisdom came too late. She is a child of her age, of depression, of war, of fear. Let her be. So, all that is in her will not bloom, but in how many does it? There is still enough left to live by. 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.

And could you not make a cameo of this and pin it onto your aesthetic hearts?

Unlike men writers who marry, most will not have the societal equivalent of a wife-- nor (in a society hostile to growing life) anyone but themselves to mother their children.

Mazie sits with a sense of non-being over her – of it being someone other than she sitting there timeless, suspended in a dusky room, feeling a voice gathering around her, kind still hands of sound flaring into words meaningless and strange, meaningless when one tries to understand, but meaningful for a fleeting second.

Never saw so many peaceful wrecks in my life.... That's what I want to be when I grow up, just a peaceful wreck holding hands with other peaceful wrecks.

More than in any human relationship, overwhelmingly more, motherhood means being instantly interruptible. It is distraction, not meditation, that becomes habitual; interruption, not continuity.

Let her be. So all that is in her will not bloom—but in how many does it? There is still enough left to live by.

Bess who has been fingering a fruit-lid jar lid — absently, heedlessly dropped it — aimlessly groping across the table, reclaims it again. Lightning in her brain. She releases, grabs, releases, grabs. I can do. Bang! I did that. I can do. I! ... Centuries of human drive work in her; human ecstasy of achievement. satisfaction deep and fundamental as sex: I can do, I use my powers; I! I!

Perhaps it frightens you as you walk by, the travail of the trees against the dark crouched house, the weak tipsy light in the window, the man sitting on the porch, menacing weariness riding his flesh like despair.

And Tracy was young, just twenty, still wet behind the ears, and the old blinders were on him so he couldn't really see what was around and he believed the bull about freedomofopportunity and a chancetorise and ifyoureallywanttoworkyoucanalwaysfindajob and ruggedindividualism and something about pursuitofhappiness.

It has never yet been a world right for love, for those we love, for ourselves, for flowered human life.

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

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

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