Marge Piercy

“Laziness is a luxurious illness, a sickness to be enjoyed.”

“The work of the world is common as mud. Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust. But the thing worth doing well done has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.”

“The real writer is one who really writes.”

“Live as if you were already dead. Then whatever you do, it will be a gift.”

“Knowledge is power, but it is a power that is of little use without wisdom.”

“What is a hero without love for mankind.”

“I am an instrument in the shape of a woman trying to translate pulsations into images for the relief of the body and the reconstruction of the mind.”

“When we are loved, we can do anything. When we are not loved, we do not want to do anything.”

“No one can threaten you unless you grant them that power.”

“When I write, I am the benefactor of my own generosity.”

“A strong woman is a woman determined to do something others are determined not be done.”

“Life is the first gift, love is the second, and understanding the third.”

“I want to be with people who submerge in the task, who go into the fields to harvest and work in a row and pass the bags along, who are not parlor generals and field deserters but move in a common rhythm when the food must come in or the fire be put out.”

“To be of use.”

“Change is not a bolt of lightning that arrives with a zap. It is a seed that sprouts in the heart of the matter, and grows.”

“We are all born blank, but we are born with the ability to learn to be kind, to be good, to be compassionate, to be loving, to be forgiving. We are born with the ability to learn to hate.”

“A book is a path of words which takes the reader on a journey.”

“The cats I have shared a house with have been some of my best friends.”