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

“Why did she do it? Nobody dared to ask. Because - what courage! Who had the courage to burn herself? Twenty aspirin, a little slit alongside the veins of the arm, maybe even a bad half hour standing on a roof: We've all had those. And somewhat more dangerous things, like putting a gun in your mouth. But you put it there, you taste it, it's cold and greasy, your finger is on the trigger, and you find that a whole world lies between this moment and the moment you've been planning, when you'll pull the trigger. That world defeats you. You put the gun back in the drawer. You'll have to find another way.

What was that moment like for her? The moment she lit the match. Had she already tried roofs and guns and aspirins? Or was it just an inspiration?

I had an inspiration once. I woke up one morning and I knew that today I had to swallow fifty aspirin. It was my task: my job for the day. I lined them up on my desk and took them one by one, counting. But it's not the same as what she did. I could have stopped, at ten, or at thirty. And I could have done what I did do, which was go onto the street and faint. Fifty aspirin is a lot of aspirin, but going onto the street and fainting is like putting the gun back in the drawer.

She lit the match.”
― Susanna Kaysen, quote from Girl, Interrupted

“ان الناس يغيرون الحقائق علي الدوام,ويعيدون كتابة تاريخهم ليسهلوا الأمور علي أنفسهم ويجعلوها أكثر ملائمة لروايات الأحداث المفضلة لديهم.انهم بفعلون هذا بشكل تلقائي ويخترعون الذكريات من دون تفكير.فان أقنع المرء نفسه بحدوث شئ ما بشكل متكرر بما يكفي لأن يصدقه,فسوف يصدقه فعلا,وهذا ما يجعله يتذكره بعد ذلك.”
― S.J. Watson, quote from Before I Go to Sleep

“Maybe nobody has a right to tell anybody to shut up. Maybe this is how wars get started, because someone tells someone else to shut up, and then no one will apologize.”
― Meg Cabot, quote from The Princess Diaries

“Silence makes idiots seem wise even for a minute.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, quote from The Angel's Game

“Is that a lion with horns and a pitchfork?"
"Yep."
"Is he carrying the moon on his pitchfork?"
"Nope it's a pie.”
― Ilona Andrews, quote from Magic Bleeds

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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.