Quotes About Representation

We don't live in the real world anymore. We live in a world of symbols.

It's weird how the name outlives the person, the signifier outlasts the signified, the symbol the symbolized.

We don't live in the real world anymore," she said. "We live in a world of symbols.

You've never seen a crucifix with a Jesus who wasn't almost naked. You've never seen a fat Jesus. Or a Jesus with body hair. Every crucifix you've ever seen, Jesus could be shirtless and modeling designer jeans or men's cologne.

Democracy is not in need of defense. People are.

Her self, then, was represented in her books.

Data is not the phenomenon. It represents the phenomenon, but not very well.

I would represent my country, the Republic of Anhedonia. We have no borders, but the population teems. No one has deigned to write down our history, but we are an ancient land, founded during the original disappointments, when the first person met another person.

Sitcom white folk, movie-of-the-week white folk were our coon show.

He was holding the image of his own people up: sometimes it was weight enough to stagger under.

Mas não é disto que se trata! Não é por vossa causa, povo, que nos, abolimos a pena de morte, mas por nossa causa, deputados, que podemos ser ministros; nós não queremos que a máquina da guilhotina morda as altas classes. Por isso quebramo-la. Tanto melhor se isto serve para toda a gente, mas só em nos pensamos.

Women don't vote, so they don't have to pay attention to what we want. If we could vote, though, they'd have to pay attention, and they'd have to pass the laws we want.

I recommend that the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast.

Texts do not signify the world, they signify the images they tear up. Hence, to decode texts, means to discover the images dignified by them

Traditional images signify phenomena whereas technical (produced by an apparatus) images signify concepts.

If woman had no existence save in the fiction written by men, one would imagine her a person of the utmost importance (...); as great as a man, some think even greater. But this is woman in fiction. In fact, as Professor Trevelyan points out [in his History of England ], she was locked up, beaten and flung about the room.

And I tried to remember any case in the course of my reading where two women are represented as friends. (...) almost without exception they are shown in their relation to men. (...) [women in fiction were] not only seen by the other sex, but seen only in relation to the other sex. And how small a part of a woman's life is that

Green in nature is one thing, green in literature another.

Las mujeres han servido durante siglos como espejos dotados del mágico y delicioso poder de reflejar la figura del hombre duplicando su tamaño natural.

It is the duty of the writer to describe.

Women have served all these centuries as looking-glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size.

Literature is impoverished beyond our counting by the doors that have been shut upon women

When you asked me to speak about women and fiction I sat down on the banks of a river and began to wonder what the words meant. They might mean simply a few remarks about Fanny Burney; a few more about Jane Austen; a tribute to the Brontes and a sketch of Haworth Parsonage under snow, some witticisms if possible about Miss Mitford; a respectful allusion to George Eliot; a reference to Mrs Gaskell and one would have done.

You must remember that fiction is the mirror of life.