Joanna Russ
21 quotes
Biography
Joanna Russ was an American writer, academic and feminist. She 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.
"Long before I became a feminist in any explicit way, I had turned from writing love stories about women in which women were losers, and adventure stories about men in which the men were winners, to writing adventure stories about a woman in which the woman won. It was one of the hardest things I ever did in my life."
"The trouble with men is that they have limited minds. That's the troublewith women, too."["Existence"(1975)]"
"The trouble with men is that they have limited minds. That's the trouble with women, too."
"Sit a man on his ass with nothing to do but eat and the first thing that goes is his mind. It never fails."
"He wished his imagination would not take so impressionistic a turn. It never fails."
"“Rational people,” said the man, “realize that their lives must be made meaningful. Meaning isn’t just given us.”"
"How withered away one can be from a life of unremitting toil."
"Dismissing the whole thing as the world’s aberration and not mine, I went back to bed."
"There are more whooping cranes in the United States of America than there are women in Congress."
"Anyway everyboy <!-- not a typo-->(sorry) knows that what women have done that is really important is not to constitute a great, cheap labor force that you can zip in when you're at war and zip out again afterwards but to Be Mothers, to form the coming generation, to give birth to them, to nurse them, to mop floors for them, to love them, cook for them, clean for them, change their diapers, pick up after them, and mainly sacrifice themselves for them. This is the most important job in the world. That’s why they don’t pay you for it."
"Fucking, if you will forgive the pun, is an anti-climax."
"“Well, hell,” said Jael more genuinely, “the war. If there isn’t one, there just was one, and if there wasn’t one, there soon will be one. Eh? The war between Us and Them."
"I told him to open his eyes, that I didn’t want to kill him with his eyes shut, for God’s sake."
"Remember, I don’t threaten. I don’t play. I always carry firearms. The truly violent are never without them."
"In the field of science fiction or fantasy, morality—when it enters a book at all—is almost always either thoughtlessly liberal (you can’t judge other cultures) or thoughtlessly illiberal (strong men must rule) or just plain thoughtless (killing people is bad)."
"Perhaps it’s because I was brought up with no religion at all that I detest the science-fiction tropism towards re-writing Christianity from what one might call the village-atheist point of view. Although (Robert Sheckley's) “Budget Planet” and Fritz Leiber’s “One Station on the Way” are colorful and active enough, there seems to me to be no point in flogging dead fundamentalist doctrines so late in the day."
"Only those who have reviewed, year in and year out, know how truly abominable most fiction is."
"There are plenty of images of women in science fiction. There are hardly any women."
"Minority art, vernacular art, is marginal art. Only on the margins does growth occur."
"The trouble with men is that they have limited minds. That's the troublewith women,"
"The reply to this was that Three took out a small revolver, and this surprised me; for everyone knows that anger is most intense towards those you know: it is lovers and neighbors who kill each other. There's no sense, after all, in behaving that way toward a perfect stranger; where's the satisfaction? No love, no need; no need, no frustration; no frustration, no hate, right? It must have been fear."