Marge Piercy Quotes

"There's too little pleasant in this nasty dying world. We all need to remember how to play, how to be children together for a little while." (Gadi, twenty-eight: HOW CAN WE TELL THE DANCER FROM THE DANCE?)

Religions have done far more damage over the centuries than good. Religion may help individuals to bear hard times and trouble and loss, but institutionalized religion of all stripes quickly becomes dangerous. Established religion always seems to breed a them vs us mentality that has lead to crusades, pogroms, ethnic cleansing, the Inquisition, genocide, civil war, and legal discrimination.

Malkah's love was strong but abrasive, scrubbing her clean. Gadi's love bore both roses and thorns... (five: FIFTEEN YEARS BEFORE: THE DAY OF ALEF)

You have to stay open and curious and keep learning as you go. Poems come from a whole variety of sources. When you're younger, you believe in inspiration. As you get older, you believe most in receptivity and work.

People had gone too far in destroying the earth, and now the earth was diminishing the number of people. (fourteen: BY THE LIGHT OF THE UNYELLOW MOON)

(What advice would you give to young people who are currently concerned about the state of the world and who want to fight against environmental destruction and big business?) There are endless organizations that have sprung up since Trump entered office to fight many of his terrible decisions and appointments.There are also environmental organizations that have been around since the seventies. Join a group that appeals to you and work on the issue that most alarms or impinges on you. No one else can tell you what to join or what to work on. It has to be something that actually gets you excited, angry, and passionate, not something you think you should care about.

"I still have insomnia, but now I tell myself stories instead of counting men." (Malkah nine: REVISING THE FAMILY ALBUM)

Poems told me there were other people who felt the way I felt. That was validation for the person I was. Poems can mean survival.

"Before you, the strongest feeling I knew was fear." (Yod, twenty-two: THE PRESENT)

If only I could tell each of them how much more fully I could love them now. I could give them, not the dutiful, selfish and perfunctory love of an adolescent, but an understanding love that would lighten their terrible burdens. (p253)

We are past the point where critics, whether reviewing a few poetry books in the London Times or New York Times, or for literary magazines, editors, teachers of literature and male poets themselves can pontificate about poetry and mean only the work of twenty or thirty white male writers.

No one before the twenty-first century had ever loved flowers and fruiting trees and little birds and the simple beauty of green leaves as did those who lived after the Famine, for whom they were precious and rare and always endangered. (four: THROUGH THE BURNING LABYRINTH)

He's in Veecee Beecee, making those elaborate worlds people play at living in instead of worrying about the one we're all stuck with." (one: IN THE CORPORATE FORTRESS)

"...No one can stop children in love unless by exile. But you'll never grow up if you don't let go of each other." (Malkah, six: WE KNOW TOO MUCH AND TOO LITTLE)

The noise from outside broke loud and sudden, as if somebody had begun cutting a superhighway through the woods. Dinah's first reaction was fury. Bounding up, she spilled her coffee right into the lap of the black velvet robe Susan had made for her. A chain saw screeched nasally but she heard something growlier under it.