Anastasia Aukeman Quotes

“This not to say that the men and women associated with the Rat Bastard Protective Association had freed themselves from the powerful hold of established gender roles on their lives. Shirley Burman, Joan Brown, Jean Conner, Jay DeFeo, and Joanna McClure most frequently provided the practical component of the vision they shared with their spouses; that is, the women all worked for a living... As Càndida Smith observed, the 'contradictions of this imaginary society fell most acutely upon the women, for... they carried the burden of 'holding things together'.”

“Setting that little girl loose in her society would be like putting a fox in with the chickens. (Violet Strange's detective boss.)”

“Do you think that the things people make fools of themselves about are any less real and true than the things they behave sensibly about? They are more true: they are the only things that are true.”

“We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it.”

“Your weight is merely a symptom of your diet and lifestyle.”

“That is what all poets do: they talk to themselves out loud”

“The cat is the beutiful devil. And here we can use the word, even without the “a.”- from a Dec. 21 1960, a letter to Sheri Martinelli"On Cats”

“I really should be studying now, but you're much more important to me than a .50 calibre machine gun.”

“When I opened the box, I had to remove myself from whose handwriting it was that I was reading and whose story I was hearing. I had to, or I never would have made it past the first letter. If I stopped to think about my Grandpa writing to my Grandma, knowing how much he loved her and how many years he spent without her after her death, I knew I wouldn’t be able to make it through just one letter without an onslaught of tears. And it was Grandpa, a voice I knew so well. One that I miss terribly.”

“Darling it may be a long time before we see one another again. But I want you to know. Every time I’ve said I love you- I meant it. There’s no two ways about it. The crew was talking about what’s ahead of us, but we all agreed on one thing. We’re coming back.”