Wider Reading Quotes

On Pulse of the Morning - "History despite its wrenching pain cannot be unlived" 

I Coming Back - "mistress of the underworld I coming back"

I, too, sing America - "I, too, am America" "I am the darker brother. They send me to eat in the kitchen" 

To Kill a Mockingbird - "You know the truth, and the truth is: some *****es lie, some *****es are immoral, some ***** men are not to be trusted around women - black or white. But this is a truth that applies to the human race and to no particular race of man." "Tom was a dead man the minute Mayella Ewell opened her mouth and screamed." 

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings - "It seemed terribly unfair to have a toothache and a headache and have to bear at the same time the heavy burden of Blackness." 

I rise - "I rise, I rise, I rise" 

Top Girls - "I spit when I see a Rolls-Royce" "I hate the working class" "I've got four cleaning jobs. Adds up." "I hate the cows I work for and their dirty dishes" 

The Kite Runner - "that Hassan would grow up to be illiterate like Ali had been decided the moment he was concieved" "He'll never be anything but a cook. How dare he criticise you?" 

TWWWID - "the kids have everything. I know; I pick it up" "I've never been able to afford good shoes for my kids - good shoes" 

Education for Leisure - "He cuts me off" "The pavements glitter suddenly I touch your arm" 

Them and [Uz] - "the speech of Kings" "glorious heritage" "aiai, ay, ay!" "We say [As] not [Uz], T.W"

Child of the Divide - "her prayers will keep you safe" "As the pulse on my wrist" "Either sort him out or send him back to those Muslims" 

Top Girls - "I thought God would speak to me directly. But of course he knew I was a woman"

The Kite Runner - "I recited half-forgotten verses from the Koran ... asked for kindness from a god I wasn't sure existed" 

A Streetcar Named Desire - "People don't see you - men don't - don't even admit your existence unless they are making love to you" "Her future is mapped out for her" 

Top Girls - "Are you saying he ***** you? ... No of course not, Marlene, I belonged to him" "I'd rather obey the Marquis than a boy from the village" 

TWWWID - "I was Charlo's girl now and that made me respectable" 

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings - "A boyfriend's acceptance would guide me into that strange and exotic land of frills and femininity" 

The Handmaid's Tale - "I avoid looking down at my body, not so much because it's shameful or immodest but because I don't want to see it. I don't want to look at something that determined me so completely" "Moira was like an elevator with open sides. She made us dizzy. Already we were losing the taste for freedom" 

Women Work - "I've got children to tend, clothes to mend" 

The Applicant - "A living doll" "It can sew, it can talk, talk, talk" 

Why is John Lennon Wearing a Skirt? - "But we won't be tarts. We can't be tarts because we'll be in control, we'll have the power of our own bodies they'll finally belong to us" "'Do what ever you want girls, but whatever you do don't lose your femininity' because femininity is just another word for fuckability and fuckability's just another word for future." 

Flag - "its just a piece of cloth"

Poppies  - "I resisted the impulse to run my fingers through the gelled blackthorns of your hair" 

Refugee Blues - "They weren't the human race, my dear, they weren't the human race" "they had no politicians and sang at ease" 

Hawk Roosting - "I kill where I please because it is all mine" 

The Kite Runner - "Wars had made fathers a rare commodity in Afghanistan" 

Hawk Roosting - "I sit in the top of the wood" 

The Handmaid's Tale - "I repeat my former name, remind myself of how others once saw me" "Already we were loosing our taster for freedom"

Animal Farm - "all animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others" "Napoleon is always right" "The creatures looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which"

Child of the Divide - "I bundle up my family, and follow the blind. I would have liked a say in our fate" 

Refugee Blues - "They had no politicians and sang at ease"

Little Red Cap - "Out of the forest I come with my flowers, singing, all alone"

To Kill a Mockingbird - "Mockingbirds don't do one thing but make music for us to enjoy... but sing their hearts out for us. That's why its a sin to kill a mockingbird."

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings - "Then there was the pain. A breaking and entering when even the senses are torn apart. The act of **** on an eight-year-old body is a matter of the needle giving because the camel can't. The child gives, because the body can, and the mind of the violator cannot."

A Streetcar Named Desire - "What you're talking about is brutal desire - just desire!... it brought me here - Where I'm not wanted and ashamed to be"

Why is John Lennon Wearing a Skirt? - "Induvidually and collectively, male and female, pushed and poked and backed me into a corner" 

Afternoons - "Young mothers assemble, at the swing and sandpit, setting their children free"

Gifts - "From my father my strong heart, my weak stomach"

Daddy - "I made a model of you [...] And I said I do, I do" "There's a stake in your fat black heart, And the villagers never liked you"

This be the verse - "They **** you up your mum and dad" 

The Kite Runner - "I ached for the mother I never met" "Baba grunted didn't answer" "I willed my eyes to stay on him" "I was hoping he'd ask more" 

The Woman Who Walked into Doors - "I was so jealous I wanted to maim her, really hurt her" "I wanted to think that she needed me" 

The Right Word - "lost in the shadows is a child who looks like mine" 

Demeter - "bringing all springs flowers" "I swaer the air softened and warmed as she moved" 

Island Man - "Comes back to the sounds of a grey metallic soar"

Refugee Blues - "Yet there's no place for us, my dear, yet there's no place for us"

The Kite Runner - "Baba loved the idea of America" 

The Woman Who Walked into Doors - "She has four children. She is a widow. She is an alchoholic" "My past was real. I could stand on it and it wouldn't collapse under me. It was there. I could start again." 

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings - "Signs with arrows around the barbecue pit pointed Men Women and Children [...] so when the urge hit me to relieve myself, I headed towards another direction" 

A Streetcar Named Desire - "Funerals are quiet, but deaths - not always" "I don't want realism. [...] I'll tell you what I want. Magic!" "You stopped that Polka tune that I had caught in my head" 

Why is John Lennon Wearing a Skirt? - "I am a boy. I am" "There's something seriously wrong with me" 

The Applicant - "Will you marry it, marry it, marry it" "How about this suit / Black and stiff, but not a bad fit" 

Why is John Lennon Wearing a Skit? - "I'm learning to cook for my future husband" "learning to feed my future family"