“Literary history and the present are dark with silences . . . I have had special need to learn all I could of this over the years, myself so nearly remaining mute and having to let writing die over and over again in me. These are not natural silences--what Keats called agonie ennuyeuse (the tedious agony)--that necessary time for renewal, lying fallow, gestation, in the natural cycle of creation. The silences I speak of here are unnatural: the unnatural thwarting of what struggles to come into being, but cannot.”
Tillie Olsen“Women have the right to say: this is surface, this falsifies reality, this degrades.”
Tillie Olsen“And when is there time to remember, to sift, to weigh, to estimate, to total?”
Tillie Olsen“The clock talked loud. I threw it away, it scared me what it talked.”
Tillie Olsen“I know that I haven't powers enough to divide myself into one who earns and one who creates.”
Tillie Olsen“Literary history and the present are dark with silences . . . I have had special need to learn all I could of this over the years, myself so nearly remaining mute and having to let writing die over and over again in me. These are not natural silences--what Keats called agonie ennuyeuse (the tedious agony)--that necessary time for renewal, lying fallow, gestation, in the natural cycle of creation. The silences I speak of here are unnatural: the unnatural thwarting of what struggles to come into being, but cannot.”
Tillie Olsen