Carolyn Heilbrun
Carolyn Heilbrun
Carolyn Gold Heilbrunwas an American academic at Columbia University, the first woman to receive tenure in the English department, and a prolific feminist author of academic studies. In addition, beginning in the 1960s, she published numerous popular mystery novels with a woman protagonist, under the pen name of Amanda Cross. These have been translated into numerous languages and in total sold nearly one million copies worldwide...
doom fear sexually trying view women
The Freudian view that accomplished women are sexually men, or trying to be, has done more, I suspect, than any other misconception to doom women to fear of accomplishment and selfhood.
accepting cups face seriously seventh six throw
As E.M. Forster so brilliantly put it, 'It is difficult, after accepting six cups of tea, to throw the seventh in the face of your hostess.' Sometimes the only way to live is to get out, or at least seriously contemplate getting out, doing the impossible, flinging the conventional tea.
favorite-words normal serious
Normal is absolutely my least favorite word.
sisterhood men he-man
Ironically, women who acquire power are more likely to be criticized for it than are the men who have always had it.
taken risk impossible
The married are those who have taken the terrible risk of intimacy and, having taken it, know life without intimacy to be impossible.
names realist cynicism
Cynic' is the sentimentalist's name for the realist.
boredom challenges sin
one sank into the ancient sin of anomie when challenges failed.
marriage betrayal boredom
Why do long marriages occasionally endow their inhabitants with a rare kind of equilibrium otherwise almost unknown in human relations? My guess is that the value of the moment has at last overshadowed the long history of resentments, betrayals, and boredom.
sex men gender
the term 'androgyny' ... defines a condition under which the characteristics of the sexes, and the human impulses expressed by men and women, are not rigidly assigned. Androgyny seeks to liberate the individual from the confines of the appropriate.
patience years rushing
as the years go on a sense of deep patience comes over one; one seems to know the virtue of ripeness, and the danger of rushing events.
writing reality stories
What marks a writer is this: until she - or he, of course - writes down whatever happened, turns it into a story, it hasn't really happened, it hasn't shape, form, reality.
gestures empty filled
Most full lives are filled with empty gestures.
our-actions outcomes strategy
We cannot guess the outcome of our actions... Which is why our actions must always be acceptable in themselves, and not as strategies.
kindness selfish years
Once you are thought selfish, not only are you forgiven a life designed mainly to suit yourself, which in anyone else would appear monstrous, but if an impulse to generosity should by chance overpower you, you will get five times the credit of some poor selfless soul who has been oozing kindness for years.