Joanna Russ Quotes

In the summer of 192- there occurred to me the most extraordinary event of my life. (beginning of "The Extraordinary Voyages of Amélie Bertrand")

Courage is willful hope. (p86)

The impulse behind fantasy I find to be dissatisfaction with literary realism. Realism leaves out so much.

Although the aesthetic satisfaction of the syllogistic form still attracts me, I'm no longer sure that it can handle much more complexity than that of a shopping list, let alone social criticism or the reconceptualization (or "breaking set") feminists have been calling the click! phenomenon for some two decades now.

It’s still very much a different world for men and women.

Sit a man on his ass with nothing to do but eat and the first thing that goes is his mind. It never fails.

We may not, by the way, be the only sapient beings in the galaxy-in fact the odds are heavily against such an occurrence-which probability sometimes gave me inexplicable comfort in the midst of the combined horrors of adolescence and the ghastliness of growing up to the tune of "Love and marriage / Go together like a horse and carriage," illegal abortion, and all the other viciousness we endured because we were young. There seem to be plenty of folks now who find that smothering, coercive, conformist, witch-hunting, red-baiting era an object of nostalgia.
They can have it.

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

He wished his imagination would not take so impressionistic a turn. It never fails.

Revision, self-criticism, change-all these are essential for any art form to maintain a sense of vitality.

The abortion question is illustrative of this. Women say, 'We want the right to own our own bodies.' And the opposition, the Moral Majority, say things like, 'When does life begin?' That's not the point. I don't give a damn when it begins. I don't give a damn what the real differences between men and women are. I just don't want to be stepped on when I walk out into the street. I don't want to have to go out at night in terror. I don't want you to tell me that you won't give me a decent job. I don't want to have a low salary. I don't want to be maltreated.

I've never lost the feeling of transcendental beauty and awe that attached itself to the physical world. Lucretius has a line in De Rerum Naturae that says something about how everything in nature fits together and gives a joy beyond expression. It's a feeling people have surely always had about the way the seasons or planets change, the way plants grow, a sense of joy or awe about what's around us.

This is the tale of the Abbess Radegunde and what happened when the Norsemen came. (first line of "Souls")

much of our mass literature, television, and movies encourages violence against women even more subtly and pervasively than pornography...If pornography is bad because it tells lies about women, is it any worse-or even any different-from the rest of the culture? Patriarchal ideology and culture are nothing but lies about women. I think we often forget this simply because it's so absolutely pervasive in everything from clothing to the design of houses to the structure of cities (anti-children and anti-women).

I told him to open his eyes, that I didn’t want to kill him with his eyes shut, for God’s sake.