Quotes from Woman on the Edge of Time

“We can only know what we can truly imagine. Finally what we see comes from ourselves.”
― Marge Piercy, quote from Woman on the Edge of Time

“The anger of the weak never goes away, Professor, it just gets a little moldy. It molds like a beautiful blue cheese in the dark, growing stronger, and more interesting. The poor and the weak die with all their anger intact and probably those angers go on growing in the dark of the grave like the hair and the nails.”
― Marge Piercy, quote from Woman on the Edge of Time

“Never in your life have you been helpless—under somebody’s heel. You never lived where your enemies held power over you, power to run your life or wipe it out. You can’t understand. That’s how come you stand there feeding me empty slogans!” Luciente bowed her head. “You crit me justly, Connie. Forgive me. I’ll try to see your situation more clearly and make less loud noises in your ears.”
― Marge Piercy, quote from Woman on the Edge of Time

“Hate them more than you hate yourself, and you’ll stay free!”
― Marge Piercy, quote from Woman on the Edge of Time

“Suddenly she thought that these men believed feeling itself a disease, something to be cut out like a rotten appendix. Cold, calculating, ambitious, believing themselves rational and superior, they chased the crouching female animal through the brain with a scalpel. From an early age she had been told that what she felt was unreal and didn’t matter. Now they were about to place in her something that would rule her feelings like a thermostat”
― Marge Piercy, quote from Woman on the Edge of Time

“I want to do something very important. Like fly into the past and make it come out right.”
― Marge Piercy, quote from Woman on the Edge of Time

“But I think we often settle for sex when we want love. And we often want love when we need something else, like a good job or a chance to go back to school.”
― Marge Piercy, quote from Woman on the Edge of Time

“She felt pride and shame wash through her. Mala, the woman who acted. To thrust herself forward into the world.”
― Marge Piercy, quote from Woman on the Edge of Time

“Whoever owned this place, these cities, whoever owned those glittering glassy office buildings in midtown filled with the purr of money turning over, those refineries over the river in Jersey with their flames licking the air, they gave nothing back. They took and took and left their garbage choking the air, the river, the sea itself. Choking her. A life of garbage. Human garbage. She had had too little of what her body needed and too little of what her soul could imagine. She had been able to do little in the years of her life, and that little had been ill paid or punished. The rest was garbage.”
― Marge Piercy, quote from Woman on the Edge of Time

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Popular quotes

“The Mona Lisa, the Mona Lisa....Leonardo had eye trouble....Art couldn't explain it....But now we're safe, since science can explain it. Maybe Milton wrote Paradise Lost because he was blind? And Beethoven wrote the Ninth Symphony because he was deaf...”
― William Gaddis, quote from The Recognitions

“Gus is the Cat at the Theatre Door.
His name, as I ought to have told you before,
Is really Asparagus. That's such a fuss
To pronounce, that we usually call him just Gus.
His coat's very shabby, he's thin as a rake,
And he suffers from palsy that makes his paw shake.
Yet he was, in his youth, quite the smartest of Cats —
But no longer a terror to mice or to rats.
For he isn't the Cat that he was in his prime;
Though his name was quite famous, he says, in his time.
And whenever he joins his friends at their club
(which takes place at the back of the neighbouring pub)
He loves to regale them, if someone else pays,
With anecdotes drawn from his palmiest days.
For he once was a Star of the highest degree —
He has acted with Irving, he's acted with Tree.
And he likes to relate his success on the Halls,
Where the Gallery once gave him seven cat-calls.
But his grandest creation, as he loves to tell,
Was Firefrorefiddle, the Fiend of the Fell.”
― T.S. Eliot, quote from Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats

“هر عارضه‌ای که تسکین پیدا کند عارضه‌ای دیگر به وخامت می‌گراید.
بشر یک چاه است با دو سطل. یکی پایین می‌رود تا پر شود، دیگری بالا می‌آید تا خالی شود ...”
― Samuel Beckett, quote from Murphy

“She tucked her lips in and eyed the pancakes Tristan pulled from the pan. "Making a midnight snack?"
She tried to sound light and casual. Normal. Friendly.
Not because Tristan deserved it, but because she wanted pancakes. And Tristan, apparently, was keeper of the pancakes.”
― Chelsea Fine, quote from Anew

“They have to be born, you know," the Third Rail says. "They don't come from nowhere! When a child sits in her chair with a clean suzuri and her long brush, she believes she is writing, but she is simply calling to these poor lambs, calling them to attend her, to pass through her. We can hardy keep up with the demand; the pollination season is intense. And yet, they learn fewer and fewer kanji as the years go by, and more and more English, more katakana, more foreign things. The graveyard is on another train, where turtles set incense on the stones of words no one learns in your world anymore, words passed out of reach of any mouth. It is important work we do. We hope you agree, of course, but we are willing to admit it foolish if you call it so.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, quote from Palimpsest

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About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.