“When other little girls wanted to be ballet dancers, I kind of wanted to be a vampire.”
Robert Benchley in "Hail to the King!!" The New Yorker, November 29, 1930, pp. 33-36. (M).
Rudolph Nureyev quoted in Cooke, Alistair. "Fred Astaire Obituary", Letter From America, BBC World Service, June 1987.
On what she hopes The Girl Who Smiled Beads accomplishes in “A moment on ‘Oprah’ made her a human rights symbol. She wants to be more than that.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/a-moment-on-oprah-made-her-a-human-rights-symbol-she-wants-to-be-more-than-that/2018/04/18/f394dd0c-3d98-11e8-a7d1-e4efec6389f0_story.html in The Washington Post (2018 Apr 19)
“The world wants water not taps, the world wants warmth not a heater.”
Attributed to Starck in: Iain Ellwood (2002) The Essential Brand Book. p. 148
“I wanted to be an actor. I never wanted to grow up. I never wanted to. I wanted to fly.”
Exclusive: Jeffrey Kramer Reflects on 45 Years of JAWS and His Killer Career https://www.dreadcentral.com/news/366940/exclusive-jeffrey-kramer-reflects-on-45-years-of-jaws-and-his-killer-career/ (January 4, 2021)
“I am a painter with letters. I want to restore everything, mix everything up and say everything.”
"As He Grows Old" (p. 87)
posthumous quotes, Degas: An Intimate Portrait' (1927)
“A face at the window,
A tap on the pane;
Who is it that wants me
To-night in the rain?”
The Messenger at Night.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
“I wanted to be strong. I never wanted to be weak again as long as I lived.”
"Many Rivers To Cross" (1981); later published in Some of Us Did Not Die : New and Selected Essays of June Jordan (2002)
Context: I wanted to be strong. I never wanted to be weak again as long as I lived. I thought about my mother and her suicide and I thought about how my father could not tell whether she was dead or alive.
I wanted to get well and what I wanted to do as soon as I was strong, actually, what I wanted to do was I wanted to live my life so that people would know unmistakably that I am alive, so that when I finally die people will know the difference for sure between my living and my death.
And I thought about the idea of my mother as a good woman and I rejected that, because I don't see why it's a good thing when you give up, or when you cooperate with those who hate you or when you polish and iron and mend and endlessly mollify for the sake of the people who love the way that you kill yourself day by day silently.
And I think all of this is really about women and work. Certainly this is all about me as a woman and my life work. I mean I am not sure my mother’s suicide was something extraordinary. Perhaps most women must deal with a similar inheritance, the legacy of a woman whose death you cannot possibly pinpoint because she died so many, many times and because, even before she became my mother, the life of that woman was taken; I say it was taken away.
