Only Where There Is Language Is There

Behind All Art Is An Element Of Desire...love Of Life, Of Existence, Love Of Another Human Being, Love Of Human Beings Is In Some Way Behind All Art — Even The Most Angry, Even The Darkest, Even The Most Grief-stricken, And Even The Most Embittered Art Has That Element Somewhere Behind It. Because How Could You Be So Despairing, So Embittered, If You Had Not Had Something You Loved That You Lost?

Each Feminist Work Has Tended To Be Received As If It Emerged From Nowhere; As If Each One Of Us Had Lived, Thought, And Worked Without Any Historical Past Or Contextual Present. This Is One Of The Ways In Which Women's Work And Thinking Has Been Made To Seem Sporadic, Errant, Orphaned Of Any Tradition Of Its Own.

It Is The Lesbian In Us Who Is Creative, For The Dutiful Daughter Of The Fathers In Us Is Only A Hack.

A Thinking Woman Sleeps With Monsters.

I Believe That Words Can Help Us Move Or Keep Us Paralysed, And That Our Choices Of Language And Verbal Tone Have Something - A Great Deal - To Do With How We Live Our Lives And Whom We End Up Speaking With And Hearing; And That We Can Deflect Words By Trivialization, Of Course, But Also By Ritualized Respect, Or We Can Let Them Enter Our Souls And Mix With The Juices Of Our Minds.