Quotes from Kate Zambreno

The biographies of the great men see their excesses as signs of their greatness.

My writing has always been considered extremely important, even though I make slim-to-no money at it.

I am home because I am a writer, but sometimes, when I'm not productive (productivity: the expectations of capitalism), I feel like a terrible housewife, or a sick person.

People are more concerned about the economy then these ridiculous concerns as to gender inequity in society, as manifested in marriages, in the mental health system, and then in literature.

I think the mad wives and mistresses are my hysterics - even the fictionalized ones. I want to trace how they were silenced, I want to find for them an escape route.

I do think that memoirs by women are reviewed differently and considered somewhat outside of the canon.

My rage and sense of alienation as to how women have been written, have allowed themselves to be written, in so many ways, has political roots.

I think for a woman, getting older can help, through personal experience, although of course older women are then rendered invisible in our society, another existential crisis.

The nonfiction novel or literary memoir as authored by women is usually given a much harder time in mainstream criticism.

The memoir by women, read by female readers, is considered a market form, not "great literature."

With fiction, the works of women are often over-interpreted as autobiography, especially when the main character is a woman, especially if she is seen as privileged.

I have almost never been compared to male writers in any review. All women.

On the whole, most biographies about literary women tend to diagnose them.

All of my wildness is in the writing. I have discovered I have to be orderly and boring in my personal life to be wild in my work.

I think so often, especially if the work is perceived of as being drawn from life, the woman, not her book, is reviewed.

I don't think men experience the embargo on channeling the autobiography in their literature.