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Marina Warner Quotes

Novelist

Marina Warner is a renowned British novelist known for her unique literary style and in-depth research into mythology and folklore. Her works often blend history, culture, and personal narrative, exploring themes of gender, identity, and memory.

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All Stories Book Way Night People Tales Thinking Arabian Arabian Nights Men

Famous Marina Warner Quotes

“The price the Virgin demanded was purity, and the way the educators of Catholic children have interpreted this for nearly two thousand years is sexual chastity. Impurity, we were taught, follows from many sins, but all are secondary to the principal impulse of the devil in the soul--lust.”

Source: Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and the Cult of the Virgin Mary

“Creating simplicity often makes the heart leap; order has been restored, the crooked made straight. But order is understanding that things cannot be made simple, that complexity reigns and must be accepted.”

Heart Has Beens Made Order Understanding Simple Creating Simplicity Accepted Complexity Leap Reign Crooked

Book:Joan of Arc: The Image of Female Heroism

Source: Joan of Arc: The Image of Female Heroism

“Fairy tales are about money, marriage, and men. They are the maps and manuals that are passed down from mothers and grandmothers to help them survive.”

Men Helping Mother Tales Fairy Grandmother Maps Fairy Tale Manuals Mother And Grandmother

Author:Marina Warner

“The female form provides the solution in which the essence itself is held; she is passio, and acted upon, the male is actio, the mover.”

Form Solutions Female Essence Males Female Form

Book:Monuments & Maidens: The Allegory of the Female Form

Source: Monuments & Maidens: The Allegory of the Female Form

“Wonder has no opposite; it springs up already doubled in itself, compounded of dread and desire at once, attraction and recoil, producing a thrill, the shudder of pleasure and of fear.”

Desire Pleasure Wonder Spring Opposites Attraction Dread Thrill Recoil

Book:Wonder Tales

Source: Wonder Tales

“Romance, in its earliest surviving form, was called ‘erotika pathemata’ by the Greeks - tales of erotic suffering.”

Romance Form Suffering Tales Greek Erotic Surviving

Book:L'Atalante

Source: L'Atalante

“Meanings of all kinds flow through the figures of women, and they often do not include who she herself is.”

Kind Figures Flow All Kinds

Book:Monuments & Maidens: The Allegory of the Female Form

Source: Monuments & Maidens: The Allegory of the Female Form

“I avoid looking in the mirror.”

Mirrors Looking In The Mirror

Author:Marina Warner

“I was brought up a Catholic and I was quite fervent, because I was sent to a convent school.”

School Catholic Fervent

Author:Marina Warner

“I shop online because I don't like to try things on in front of an alien mirror.”

Trying Fronts Mirrors Aliens Shops Online

Author:Marina Warner

“If you want to learn about a culture, you look at what buildings the people lived in but you also want to know about their cosmos.”

People Ifs Knows Want Looks Culture Building Cosmos

Author:Marina Warner

“When I was young, I did actually model and was much photographed by famous photographers. But I was always a bookworm.”

Young Models Photographer Bookworms

Author:Marina Warner

About the Author

Born: November 9, 1946
Known for: Novelist
Quotes: 62

Books & Sources

Into the Dangerous World: Some Reflections on Childhood and Its CostsRelated source material

Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and the Cult of the Virgin MaryRelated source material

Joan of Arc: The Image of Female HeroismRelated source material

Monuments & Maidens: The Allegory of the Female FormRelated source material

L'AtalanteRelated source material

Signs & wonders: essays on literature & cultureRelated source material

The Leto bundleRelated source material

Wonder TalesRelated source material

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