Tillie Olsen Quotations

Literature is a place for generosity and affection and hunger for equals - not a prizefight ring. We are increased, confirmed in our medium, roused to do our best, by every good writer, every fine achievement. Would we want one good writer or fine book less? The sense of writers being pitted against each other is bred primarily by the workings of the commercial marketplace, and by critics lauding one writer at the expense of another while ignoring the existence of nearly all.

I know that I haven’t powers enough to divide myself into one who earns and one who creates.

Writers in a profit making economy are an exploitable commodity whose works are products to be marketed, and are so judged and handled.

There are worse words than cuss-words, there are words that hurt.

Lighting does occasionally strike and occasional the result isn't a corpse.

Time granted does not necessarily coincide with time that can be most fully used.

Better mankind born without mouths and stomachs than always to worry about money to buy, to shop, to fix, to cook, to wash, to clean.

I could not live by literature if only to begin with, because of the slow maturing of my work and its special character.

Not everybody feels religion the same way. Some it's in their mouth, but some it's like a hope in their blood, their bones.

Compared to men writers of like distinction and years of life, few women writers have had lives of unbroken productivity, or leave behind a 'body of work.' Early beginnings, then silence; or clogged late ones (foreground silences); long periods between books (hidden silences); characterize most of us.