Kate Zambreno Quotes

I do think that memoirs by women are reviewed differently and considered somewhat outside of the canon.

My rage and sense of alienation as to how women have been written, have allowed themselves to be written, in so many ways, has political roots.

All of my wildness is in the writing. I have discovered I have to be orderly and boring in my personal life to be wild in my work.

It is only through having a stable loving partnership that I began to feel in control enough to attempt a strict writing discipline, to realize something I always knew was simmering underneath.

I think the online space can be a free space, in that we are not reliant online on the publishing industry or readers who just don't get it.

With fiction, the works of women are often over-interpreted as autobiography, especially when the main character is a woman, especially if she is seen as privileged.

I always remember my childhood as traumatic, for various reasons; I always felt alienated, outside.

For years I lived rather medicated and muted - I did not possess language to describe my vague feelings of unhappiness, to politicize it, to attempt to transcend it.

I have almost never been compared to male writers in any review. All women.

I don't think men experience the embargo on channeling the autobiography in their literature.

When I get too worked up about things I have always escaped into catatonia.

The nonfiction novel or literary memoir as authored by women is usually given a much harder time in mainstream criticism.

If one writes the rules then one can contradict oneself. It's all about rhetoric, about official narratives.

On the whole, most biographies about literary women tend to diagnose them.

The biographies of the great men see their excesses as signs of their greatness.

I think genius can have a lot to do with nerve. And permission.

Patriarchy is having the power to name.

I think so often, especially if the work is perceived of as being drawn from life, the woman, not her book, is reviewed.

The memoir by women, read by female readers, is considered a market form, not "great literature."

People are depressed for many reasons, one of which I think is how we have been taught to react to trauma, to stress.

People are more concerned about the economy then these ridiculous concerns as to gender inequity in society, as manifested in marriages, in the mental health system, and then in literature.

I'm exposing faultlines, dealing especially with rhetoric. Showing that heterosexuality is a disease, or at least its inheritance.

I think for a woman, getting older can help, through personal experience, although of course older women are then rendered invisible in our society, another existential crisis.

The hope in literature is that we are allowed to be imperfect, to write of our imperfection, without being overly critiqued for being unlikeable.

I think that writing and publishing are different. I think I will always write; I might not always publish. The idea of not publishing is wonderful!

I am home because I am a writer, but sometimes, when I'm not productive (productivity: the expectations of capitalism), I feel like a terrible housewife, or a sick person.

My writing has always been considered extremely important, even though I make slim-to-no money at it.

I am worthy of being read. I mean, one has to be convinced of one's genius.

I think the mad wives and mistresses are my hysterics - even the fictionalized ones. I want to trace how they were silenced, I want to find for them an escape route.

Agnes always wanted to go out. Out was better than in. In was inside, in was interior, in was introspection.

Sometimes she is struck by how much she goes through life almost unconsciously. She is being swept along. She is a pale ghost.

What does she want to be? A green girl doesn't like to consider this question. She is waiting around to be discovered just for being herself.