Quotes by Joanna Russ

About Joanna Russ:

Joanna Russ is the author of a number of works of science fiction, fantasy and feminist literary criticism such as How to Suppress Women's Writing, as well as a contemporary novel, On Strike Against God, and one children's book, Kittatinny. She is best known for The Female Man, a novel combining utopian fiction and satire.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Minority art, vernacular art, is marginal art. Only on the margins does growth occur.

Joanna Russ

An as-yet-unpublished poet in Boulder, Colorado, once said to me that anything worth doing was worth doing badly. I may seem, in the foregoing sketchy pages, to have followed her advice rather too well.

Joanna Russ

The idea that any art is achieved 'intuitively' is a dehumanization of the brains, effort, and the traditions of the artist, and a classification of said artist as subhuman. It is those supposed incapable of intelligence, training, or connection with...

Joanna Russ

And middle-class women, although taught to value established forms, are in the same position as the working class: neither can use established forms to express what the forms were never intended to express (and may very well operate to conceal).

Joanna Russ

Privileged groups, like everyone else, want to think well of themselves and to believe that they are acting generously and justly.

Joanna Russ

At the level of high culture with which this book is concerned, active bigotry is probably fairly rare. , since the social context is so far from neutral. To act in a way both sexist and racist, to maintain one's class privilege, it is only necessary...

Joanna Russ

Ignorance is not bad faith. But persistence in ignorance is.

Joanna Russ

The re-evaluation and rediscovery of minority art (including the cultural minority of women) is often conceived as a matter of remedying injustice and exclusiveness through doing justice to individual artists by allowing their work into the canon, wh...

Joanna Russ

(Ezekial saw the wheel (Way up in the middle of the air -- (O Ezekial saw the wheel (Way in the middle of the air! (Now the big wheel runs by faith (And the little wheel runs by the grace of God -- (The above made up by professional hope experts, you...

Joanna Russ

Leaning her silly, beautiful, drunken head on my shoulder, she said, "Oh, Esther, I don't want to be a feminist. I don't enjoy it. It's no fun." "I know," I said. "I don't either." People think you decide to be a "radical," for God's sake, like decid...

Joanna Russ

I think," said my neighbour, her chin high in the air (and still spiffed, I am glad to say) "that women who've never married and never had children have missed out on the central experiences of life. They are emotionally crippled." Now what am I supp...

Joanna Russ

The demon got up. The demon said Fool. To think you can eat their food and not talk to them. To think you can take their money and not be afraid of them. To think you can depend on their company and not suffer from them.

Joanna Russ

(Only God can make a tree and She seldom tries, nowadays.)

Joanna Russ

Leaning her silly, beautiful, drunken head on my shoulder, she said, 'Oh, Esther, I don't want to be a feminist. I don't enjoy it. It's no fun.' 'I know,' I said. 'I don't either.' People think you to be a 'radical,' for God's sake, like deciding to ...

Joanna Russ

Well, of course, you can't expect people to rearrange their minds in five minutes. And I'm not good at this. And I don't want to do it. It's a bore, anyway. Unfortunately I know what will happen if I keep on; I'll say that if we are going to talk abo...

Joanna Russ

I left her wallpapering her much-loved, much-tended little corner of hell.

Joanna Russ

That not all men are piggy, only some; that not all men belittle me, only some; that not all men get mad if you won’t let them play Chivalry, only some; that not all men write books in which women are idiots, only most; that not all men pull rank o...

Joanna Russ

To die on a dying Earth - I'd live, if only to weep.

Joanna Russ

And here, of course, we come to the one occupation of a female protagonist in literature, the one thing she can do, and by God she does it and does it and does it, over and over and over again. She is the protagonist of a Love Story.

Joanna Russ

There is the vanity training, the obedience training, the self-effacement training, the deference training, the dependency training, the passivity training, the rivalry training, the stupidity training, the placation training. How am I to put this to...

Joanna Russ

Author Bio

  • NameJoanna Russ
  • DescriptionAmerican author
  • BornFebruary 22, 1937
  • DiedApril 29, 2011
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionWriter; Novelist
  • WorksWhen It Changed; The Female Man; How To Suppress Women's Writing; The Adventures Of Alyx; And Chaos Died; We Who Are About To...; The Two Of Them; To Write Like A Woman
  • AwardsNebula Award; Hugo Award