Women Authors

"…all sorts of things that don’t even look political got mixed up with the 1970s and the new politics. So, that was how, when I came here, how I viewed Mr. Manley and Woodside. Anything that was out of the current order then was now possible. As if Mr. Manley had shattered some sort of glass globe and people could go inside and take what ideas they felt like having. It was really quite revolutionary, if unstructured. (2015)"

"Skozi trpljenje nas žlahtni usoda. Ena misel je, en klic: Svoboda!"

"I am privy to much that is unknown. Of sea and earth and sky I know an infinity of small and magic secrets. This time, however, I will tell only about the sea."

"The story I am about to tell is the story of my life. It begins where other stories usually end; I mean, it begins with a wedding, a really strange wedding, my own. (beginning of chapter one)"

"I wish to inform the reader that even though this is a mystery, it is a mystery without murder. He will not find here any corpse, any detective; he will not even find a murder trial, for the simple reason that there will be no murderer. There will be no murderer and no murder, yet there will be....crime. And there will be fear. Those for whom fear has an attraction; those who are interested in the mysterious life people live in their dreams during sleep; those who believe that the dead are not really dead; those who are afraid of the fog and of their own hearts... they will perhaps enjoy going back to the early days of this century and entering into the strange house of mist that a young woman, very much like all other women, built for herself at the southern end of South America."

"As night was beginning to fall, slowly her eyes opened. Oh, a little, just a little. It was as if, hidden behind her long lashes, she was trying to see. And in the glow of the tall candles, those who were keeping watch leaned forward to observe the clarity and transparency in that narrow fringe of pupil death had failed to dim. With wonder and reverence, they leaned forward, unaware that she could see them. For she was seeing, she was feeling."

"Day by day, proud human beings that we are, we have a tendency to renounce our elemental roots, which accounts for the fact that women no longer appreciate their braids. Being rationalists nowadays, women in cutting off their braids ignore that in effect they are severing their ties with those magic currents which issue from the very heart of the earth. Because a woman's hair springs from the most profound and mysterious source, whence is born the first trembling seed of life-evolving therefrom to struggle and grow among many entangling forces, thrusting through the vegetal surface into the air and on upwards to the privileged forehead of its choice."

"For the majority of readers, Latin American fantastic literature operates under the tutelage of the great masters: Jorge Luis Borges, Adolfo Bioy Casares, Julio Cortázar and Gabriel García Márquez. However, although few are acquainted with their works, many women began experimenting with this genre well before their male counterparts and were the true precursors of the form, though their names remained on the shelves of oblivion, without the recognition that they deserved. María Luisa Bombal, for example, wrote the fantastic nouvelle, House of Mist (1937) before the famous Ficciones (1944) of Borges..."

"I also think that one of the things that has shaped my sensibilities as a writer is the intense beauty of the country in which I grew up. I have internalized this landscape; the mountains, in particular, the valleys... Those are the profound elements that have shaped me: the fact that we lived with trees as a part of the social fabric of our lives-with plants-and the fact that we lived in this intensely beautiful landscape. Not lost on me as a child was the fact that it masked a lot of hardship and pain and so on."

"OS: There is a certain imperative about what I write and how I write, and I'm going to follow that imperative regardless. (KD: And that imperative is prompted by...) OS: the desire to explain. It's the why, the who and the why. I am driven by those issues."

"I suppose the main thing about me is that I don't feel or see any disjunction between life and land or between living and landscape; I don't make those separations at all. I imagine that I'm like that because I grew up in deep rural Jamaica and I was conscious from earliest childhood about the power of plants."

"I think I'm an odd kind of Caribbean writer in the sense that I don't come out of the rich, middle-class elite who are the traditional writers. It's almost like cloning themselves, you know. So what they write is very much their image of the world. There's never been a voice that's been a poor voice, and I've never, ever seen myself reflected in Jamaican fiction. To some extent in Olanda Paterson, but very little. All of them, including Olive Senior, can't get into the psyche [of poor people] because they don't know it and it's an alien place, something they are afraid of. And so what happens is that they create a distorted image of people like me and my family."

"I haven't done research for any specific poem, but my writing is not separate from my life; and I have spent my entire life doing research (if you want to put it that way) in order to answer all the fundamental questions we ask about ourselves in the first place, starting with the existential questions like "who am I?" But that, of course, inevitably leads into "who are we?" And that, in turn, leads into "where are we coming from?" And it seems to me that this is my engagement, which is an engagement with history-both a personal and an ancestral history, but also with a wider notion of history: the history of the Caribbean, and indeed of the so-called New World."

"(Q: advice for struggling writers?) OS: Keep at it. Writing is a craft like any other and you get better with practice. Have faith in yourself but dampen unrealistic expectations. Remember that words are your raw material – love them, acquire them, use then, lose them when necessary. Read widely. Question what you are reading. What works? What doesn’t? How does the author achieve certain effects? This is a good way to learn. (2014)"

"Moja pesem ne utira novih, drznih si poti; stvarstvo božje v vseh odtenkih njenim strunam govori. Ne potaplja se v globine in ne sili v visočine. Skozi srečo in gorje pesem moja eno išče: pot v človekovo svetišče, ki mu pravimo srce."

"I was always going to be an artist or a writer, because I was talented in those areas, but also, I now think, because they held out the seductive whiff of freedom. I was always in silent rebellion against the conformity and authoritarianism of the world I was born in. (format 2006)"

"Somebody, I forget who it was, said that I was like a literary archeologist, which pleased me because that is how I look at it myself."

"I am very conscious as a writer of removing myself and my personal concerns from what is going on in the text. I try to become these people that I am writing about; I assume various personas. The other question is whether or not I see myself a griot. I see myself as making things possible for my characters, like setting the stage and giving these unknown people from history the chance to speak to the other world. But I, personally, do not assume any roles for myself; that is not what I want to be. I want to be the archeologist, to dig and to bring up these things and say to the world, "Here they are." And let people draw whatever conclusion they want from it. But I don't see myself taking an activist role or playing or assuming a role that is mystical or ordained or anything like that."

"I think that there are three major influences on my work. One is that I had what would have been called a classical English education, which it was at the time I went to school. So, of course, I grew up on this diet of Wordsworth and Keats and Shelley and, you know, the great English classics. So I think that has influenced my work. I also grew up on the bible, and I regard the oral tradition as having played a very important part in shaping my work. And when I talk about the oral tradition I'm talking about not just the content but the rhythms, because a lot of our games in school, for instance, were based on rhythm and physical dexterity-you know, clapping and all this kind of thing. Everything was performed to rhythm: the floor was cleaned to rhythm, the clothes were washed to rhythm - you just couldn't escape this. Therefore, I feel that all of these things are coming together in my writing, because I am very conscious of rhythm in my prose as well. I think I have a good ear. It's all there in my head, all these sounds. And of course, I've read, and read, and read, and read, all my life."

"Today, in Santiago, Chile, or Buenos Aires, in Caracas or Lima, when they name the best names, María Luisa Bombal is never missing from the list. This fact is even more notable when one considers the brevity of her work-which does not correspond to any determined "school" and which fortunately is devoid of any regionalism."

"Here’s a very short list of Latin women novelists I think should have been considered part of the Boom…Mexico: Elena Garro, Rosario Castellanos. Costa Rica: Carmen Naranjo. Brazil: Clarice Lispector. Uruguay: Armonía Somers. Chile: María Luisa Bombal. Argentina: Silvina Ocampo, Nora Lange, Elvira Orphée..."

"Zakaj si toliko mi dal gorja, neskončni Bog, ki si dobrota sama? Kako sem bala se, da bo med nama nastal prepad brez konca in meja."

"Ko bo svet pregnetla misel zdrava in ljubezen stala bo najviše, vzklili bodo mir, svoboda, sprava."

"Ni za sveto stvar težko umreti, a še mnogo, mnogo dal bi rad … V grob s seboj po sili hudobije neizrabljen nesel bom zaklad."

"She let herself out by the back door and carefully shut it behind her, and ran through the short cut that led to the main road, hoping that no one would see. (beginning of "Discerner of Hearts")"

"...Swimming? In the Ba'ma grass? Who ever heard of such a thing and a big man at that? (beginning of "Swimming in the Ba'ma Grass")"

"I am not a scrupulous plotter of fiction or poetry – I write intuitively, thinking for a long time about my subject and also allowing my unconscious to work on it until the day comes when it seems ready to be written. (2014)"

"It is quite deplorable to see how many rational creatures (or, at least, who are thought so) mistake suffering for sanctity, and think a sad face and a gloomy habit of mind, propitious offerings to that deity, whose works are all light, and lustre, and harmony, and loveliness."

"The influence of woman was, is, and ever will be exercised, directly or indirectly, in good or in evil! It is a part of the scheme of nature. Give her then the lights she is capable of receiving; educate her (whatever her station) for taking her part in society. Her ignorance has often made her interference fatal: her knowledge, never."

"The playful kitten, with its pretty little tigerish gambles, is infinitely more amusing than half the people one is obliged to live with in the world."

"Race and temperament go for so much in influencing opinion!"

"Vulgarity is setting store by "the things which are seen.""

"You see, my good friend, how much we are the creatures of situation and circumstance, and with what pliant servility the mind resigns itself to the impressions of the senses, or the illusions of the imagination."

"Your letters are always to me fresher than flowers, without their fading so soon."

"Architecture is the printing-press of all ages, and gives a history of the state of the society in which it was erected; from the cromlech of the Druids to those toyshops of royal bad taste."

"Aside from that, I really hope that this group can help people feel more tied to their city and to be more invested in caring for it"

"We’ve also seen both municipal officials and those who work with the public transportation system release statements to respond to certain criticisms posted on the group. We think that is fairly brave of them. It is also a space to let people know what their friends and neighbours find inconsiderate behaviour, like parking a car on a pavement or blocking pedestrian crossings"

"Quite a few journalists follow our page so that brings some media attention to issues that affect a large number of Casablanca residents. Recently, for example, there were debates on the state of the beaches around Casablanca and the people who take over various sections and illegally force beachgoers to pay if they want to swim or sunbathe there"

"It is about the impotence, the disillusionment that devours us without being able to express it, to shout it, to claim it properly, without being able to make a real break and assume it, a break as an individual, a citizen of the world, a human being, a break in solitude before registering it in the group"

"It describes feelings, emotions, doubt, self-destruction, frustration and depicts a youth who does not necessarily question themselves, who likes excess and cares for inconsistencies, who judges themselves to be both victims and guilty, while being lost, in search of meaning but also in search of themselves."

"First be free, then ask for freedom"

"We must make our own choices and not follow those that have been suggested to us, define ourselves in relation to our life and not the one that society imposes on us, free ourselves from ourselves, from our demons, our paradoxes and our famous schizophrenia, to better free ourselves from others and inhabit the world as it is."

"There are four main themes of discussion on this group: the management of rubbish and city cleanliness, public transportation, the use of public space, and security"

"As this group has gained a wider following, it has resulted in some changes. Fairly often, someone will post something about a pile-up of rubbish in their neighbourhood. People start to comment on it and share it. Then, soon after, city workers come and deal with the issue"

"Alas! how truly did he tell her, that the love of ornament creeps slowly, but surely, into the female heart;—that the girl who twines the lily in her tresses, and looks at herself in the clear stream, will soon wish that the lily was fadeless, and the stream a mirror."

"In marriage, woman is a serf. In public instruction, she is sacrificed. In labor, she is made inferior. Civilly, she is a minor. Politically, she has no existence. She is the equal of man only when punishment and the payment of taxes are in question. I claim the rights of woman, because it is time to make the nineteenth century ashamed of its culpable denial of justice to half the human species; Because the state of inferiority in which we are held corrupts morals, dissolves society, deteriorates and enfeebles the race; Because the progress of enlightenment, in which woman participates, has transformed her in social power, and because this new power produces evil in default of the good which it is not permitted to do; Because the time for according reforms has come, since women are protesting against the order which oppresses them; some by disdain of laws and prejudices; others by taking possession of contested positions, and by organizing themselves into societies to claim their share of human rights, as is done in America; Lastly, because it seems to me useful to reply, no longer with sentimentality, but with vigor, to those men who, terrified by the emancipating movement, call to their aid false science to prove that woman is outside the pale of right; and carry indecorum and the opposite of courage, even to insult, even to the most revolting outrages."

"Beauty depends more upon the movement of the face than upon the form of the features when at rest. Thus a countenance habitually under the influence of amiable feelings acquires a beauty of the highest order, from the frequency with which such feelings are the originating causes of the movement or expressions which stamp their character upon it."

"I did not want to express myself, from abroad, where I was participating in an academic seminar, on the reasons that led to my resignation."

"Wearing a headscarf is not, in itself, a spiritual target. Those who do not “feel” the need to do so have the freedom to live their spirituality outside of this standard “garment.” And those who feel a need to follow this prescription and see it as a profound experience of intimacy and inwardness with the Creator also have the freedom to live their spirituality within the “garment” standard. In both cases, it is a matter of living one’s spirituality according to the same liberating approach. The headscarf is a part of the ethic and is, before all, a woman’s right. Women must have the right to choose to wear it or not to wear it, knowingly (an informed decision), because the right to wear it is inevitably linked to the right not to wear it."

"To avoid any malicious instrumentalization that would disguise my patriotism, my values, and my deep convictions."