Suzette Haden Elgin Quotes

The two men sat there together, in the kind of silence that's not empty because it has the thoughts of two longtime friends to fill it.

We are men, and human words are all we have: even the Word of God is composed actually of the words of men.” (HUNTING THE DIVINE FOX, by Robert Farrar Capon,

First principle: there's no such thing as reality. We make it up by perceiving stimuli from the environment - external or internal - and making statements about it. Everybody perceives stuff, everybody makes up statements about it, everybody - so far as we can tell - agrees enough to get by, so that when I say 'Hand me the coffee' you know what to hand me. And that's reality. Second principle; people get used to a certain kind of reality and come to expect it, and if what they perceive doesn't fit the set of statements everybody's agreed to, either the culture has to go through a kind of fit until it adjusts...or they just blank it out.

True, everything they’d done so far had failed. But they had learned things! What had happened to the idea of knowledge for the sake of knowledge? Truth for the sake of truth?

Women are valued to the degree that they serve the needs of men.

But she would learn. Every woman was a prisoner for life; it was not some burden that she bore uniquely. She would have all the company she could ever need. *

Any beginning is also an ending, you know. You can't have just the one.

No longer were there “doctors” of anthropology and physics and literature to offend the real doctors and confuse the public; they had put a stop to that, as they had put a stop to so many things that were unseemly and inappropriate.

He stayed carefully away from the profs, he ran the data they gave him without allowing any of it to register in his memory—that’s what you have computers for, so you don’t have to put stuff in your own memory—and that was all he did.

Now, the only song a woman knows is the song she learns at birth, a sorrowin’ song, with the words all wrong, in the many tongues of Earth. The things a woman wants to say, the tales she longs to tell . . . they take all day in the tongues of Earth, and half of the night as well. So nobody listens to what a woman says, except the men of power who sit and listen right willingly, at a hundred dollars an hour . . . sayin’ “Who on Earth would want to talk about such foolish things?” Oh, the tongues of Earth don’t lend themselves to the songs a woman sings! There’s a whole lot more to a womansong, a whole lot more to learn; but the words aren’t there in the tongues of Earth, and there’s noplace else to turn. . . . So the woman they talk, and the men they laugh, and there’s little a woman can say, but a sorrowin’ song with the words all wrong, and a hurt that won’t go away. The women go workin’ the manly tongues, in the craft of makin’ do, but the women that stammer, they’re everywhere, and the wellspoken ones are few. . . . ’Cause the only song a woman knows is the song she learns at birth; a sorrowin’ song with the words all wrong, in the manly tongues of Earth. (a 20th century ballad, set to an even older tune called “House of the Rising Sun”; this later form was known simply as “Sorrowin’ Song, With the Words All Wrong”)

Judas Rose both articulates and critiques the New World Order that was beginning to develop when Elgin was writing the novel. It also speaks to our new New World Order, in which a patriotic nationalism claiming to support feminist emancipation is activated in the name of a transnational global culture whose economic order is indifferent, at best, to the well-being of women.

stupid man was the “in charge” position, leaving people who knew what they were doing free to do it, while

There was no end to the inventiveness of men when their goal was to prove their mastery. It

Nazareth wasted no time in anything she did, and years of experience with her brood of nine had given her a firm way of bustling another person along that was impressive even to a professional nurse who did professional person-bustling.

The language we use to describe and operate in the world affects the way we understand the world, our place in it, and our interactions with one another. Changing our language changes our world. This

There’s got to be something you can do with them, or they will literally drive you crazy. Women out of control are a curse—and if you don’t put a stop to it, you’ll regret it bitterly later on.

It was her favorite cup, emerald-green china with a rim of silver, and sturdy enough to drink from half awake without worrying that she'd crush it, the last unbroken one of a set used for company meals when she was still in Granny School. She despised the cups her mother and grandmother chose to start their days with, delicate white porcelain with the Brightwater Crest on the side, big enough to hold maybe three good swallows, and so frail they felt like eggshells in your hand. She could face those later in the day if need be, but not before breakfast, and at no time did she admire them.

They are encumbered with secret pregnancies that never come to term. There are no terms, you don’t see. They drag their swollen brains about with them everywhere; hidden in pleats and drapes and cunning pouches; and the unbearable keep kicking, kicking under the dura mater. It is no bloody wonder they have headaches. Hold them to your ear, lumpy as they are, and pale; that roar you hear is the surge of the damned unspeakable being kept back. Stone will not dilate will not stretch will not tear— it shivers. Cleaves. Moves uneasily. At its core the burgundy lava simmers, making room. There are volcanoes at the bottom of the sea. Those pretty green things swaying are their false hair. Deliver us? Ram inward the forceps of the patriarchal paradigm and your infernal medicine and bring forth the ancient offspring with their missing mouths? I think not. Not bloody likely. (20th

Now, the only song a woman knows is the song she learns at birth, a sorrowin’ song, with the words all wrong, in the many tongues of Earth. The things a woman wants to say, the tales she longs to tell . . . they take all day in the tongues of Earth, and half of the night as well. So nobody listens to what a woman says, except the men of power who sit and listen right willingly, at a hundred dollars an hour . . . sayin’ “Who on Earth would want to talk about such foolish things?” Oh, the tongues of Earth don’t lend themselves to the songs a woman sings! There’s a whole lot more to a womansong, a whole lot more to learn; but the words aren’t there in the tongues of Earth, and there’s noplace else to turn. . . . So the woman they talk, and the men they laugh, and there’s little a woman can say, but a sorrowin’ song with the words all wrong, and a hurt that won’t go away. The women go workin’ the manly tongues, in the craft of makin’ do, but the women that stammer, they’re everywhere, and the wellspoken ones are few. . . . ’Cause the only song a woman knows is the song she learns at birth; a sorrowin’ song with the words all wrong, in the manly tongues of Earth. (a 20th century ballad, set to an even older tune called “House of the Rising Sun”; this later form was known simply as “Sorrowin’ Song, With the Words All Wrong”)

There was no end to the inventiveness of men when their goal was to prove their mastery.

Any beginning is also an ending, you know. You can’t have just the one.

A prisoner hears, “You are sentenced to life”; Nazareth felt that now, more sharply than she had ever had to feel it before. But she would learn. Every woman was a prisoner for life; it was not some burden that she bore uniquely. She would have all the company she could ever need.

...wary as any burnt child with an unfamiliar fire to contend with.

Confederation Day every blessed year on December 12.

A symbol is best answered by a symbol. Not by a . . . meat cleaver.

there was something so appealing to me about Tiffany’s pragmatism. She reminds me of Suzette Haden Elgin’s character, Responsible of Brightwater