Joanna Russ Quotes

Joanna Russ was an American writer, academic and radical 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. She is best known for The Female Man, a novel combining utopian fiction and satire, and the story "When It Changed". Wikipedia

✵ 22. February 1937 – 29. April 2011  •  Other names جوانا روس, ג'ואנה ראס

Works

The Female Man

The Female Man

Joanna Russ

How to Suppress Women's Writing

How to Suppress Women's Writing

Joanna Russ

The Female Man

The Female Man

Joanna Russ

How to Suppress Women's Writing

How to Suppress Women's Writing

Joanna Russ

Joanna Russ: 22 quotes0 likes

Famous Joanna Russ Quotes

“There are plenty of images of women in science fiction. There are hardly any women.”

“I once asked a young dissertation writer whether her suddenly grayed hair was due to ill health or personal tragedy; she answered: “It was the footnotes”.”

Joanna Russ book How to Suppress Women's Writing

Source: How to Suppress Women's Writing

“As my mother once said: The boys throw stones at the frogs in jest.
But the frogs die in earnest.”

Joanna Russ book The Female Man

Part 8, Chapter 10 (p. 196)
Source: Fiction, The Female Man (1975)

“Ignorance is not bad faith. But persistence in ignorance is.”

Joanna Russ book How to Suppress Women's Writing

Source: How to Suppress Women's Writing

“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
"Books" (review column), The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, December 1968
Non-fiction

“Rational people,” said the man, “realize that their lives must be made meaningful. Meaning isn’t just given us.”

Source: Fiction, And Chaos Died (1970), Chapter 3 (p. 155)

Joanna Russ Quotes about women

“Anyway everyboy (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.”

Part 7, Chapter 1 (p. 137)
Fiction, The Female Man (1975)

“The trouble with men is that they have limited minds. That's the trouble with women, too.”

Existence (1975)
Fiction

“There are more whooping cranes in the United States of America than there are women in Congress.”

Part 4, Chapter 8 (p. 61)
Fiction, The Female Man (1975)

Joanna Russ Quotes

“I'm not a girl. I'm a genius.”

Joanna Russ book The Female Man

Source: The Female Man

“I didn’t and don’t want to be a ‘feminine’ version or a diluted version or a special version or a subsidiary version or an ancillary version, or an adapted version of the heroes I admire. I want to be the heroes themselves.”

Joanna Russ book The Female Man

Part 9, Chapter 4 (p. 206)
Source: Fiction, The Female Man (1975)
Context: Remember: I didn’t and don’t want to be a “feminine” version or a diluted version or a special version or a subsidiary version or an ancillary version, or an adapted version of the heroes I admire. I want to be the heroes themselves.
What future is there for a female child who aspires to being Humphrey Bogart?

“Remember, I don’t threaten. I don’t play. I always carry firearms. The truly violent are never without them.”

Part 8, Chapter 8 (pp. 181-182)
Fiction, The Female Man (1975)

“Houses stretched off on all sides, sometimes dipping below the ground and sometimes emerging out of it, piling themselves into pyramids, into almost toppling waves, never one rooftree more than eighty yards from the next. The planet was covered. There were the old, open-air cities planted with whatever would grow, mountains honeycombed, resorts in Antarctica, covered roads crammed with carrier traffic only, hovercraft, sea-craft, masses, structures, and installations under the sea, nets of algae towed in the air, some insects and no animals whatever, but people, people, people everywhere.
What’s the opposite of the Garden of Eden?”

Source: Fiction, And Chaos Died (1970), Chapter 3 (p. 120)

“And you think they’ll let you,” said Machine. It was a flat, sad statement.
“No,” she said, “but nobody ever let me do anything in my life before and I never let that stop me.”

Source: Fiction, Picnic on Paradise (1968), p. 119

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

Part 8, Chapter 8 (p. 181)
Fiction, The Female Man (1975)

“Dismissing the whole thing as the world’s aberration and not mine, I went back to bed.”

Part 2, Chapter 8 (p. 25)
Fiction, The Female Man (1975)

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

Source: Fiction, And Chaos Died (1970), Chapter 3 (p. 110)

“How withered away one can be from a life of unremitting toil.”

Part 2, Chapter 5 (p. 22)
Fiction, The Female Man (1975)

“If you want to be an assassin, remember that you must decline all challenges. Showing off is not your job.
If you are insulted, smile meekly. Don’t break your cover.
Be afraid. This is information about the world.
You are valuable. Push yourself.
Take the easiest way out whenever possible. Resist curiosity, pride, and the temptation to defy limits. You are not your own woman and must be built to last.
Indulge hatred. Action comes from the heart.
Pray often. How else can you quarrel with God?”

Part 8, Chapter 9 (p. 191)
Fiction, The Female Man (1975)

““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.”

Part 8, Chapter 6 (pp. 163-164)
Fiction, The Female Man (1975)

“Only those who have reviewed, year in and year out, know how truly abominable most fiction is.”

"Books" (review column), The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, November 1979
Non-fiction

“Fucking, if you will forgive the pun, is an anti-climax.”

Part 7, Chapter 2 (p. 139)
Fiction, The Female Man (1975)

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