Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Hortense Calisher

Quote by Hortense Calisher

Work

Herself: An Autobiographical Work

This book is a first-person account of the author's life, delving into personal stories, insights, and the development of their identity over time. more

Author

Hortense Calisher
Hortense Calisher

Hortense Calisher was an American writer renowned for her short stories and essays. Her work is celebrated for its profound emotion and complex narrative structures. She wrote across various literary genres, including magical realism and black humor. more

You May Also Like

“I want a revamped feminism. Putting the vamp back means the lady must be a tramp. My generation of the Sixties rebels wanted to smash the bourgeois codes that had become authoritarian totems of the Fifties. The 'nice' girl with her soft, sanitized speech and decorous manners had to go. Thirty years later, we're still stuck with her - in the official spokesmen and the anointed heiresses of the feminist establishment.”

WantYearsMeanStillsWantedGirlSexWomenNiceGenerationsFeminismStuckCodeThirtyRebelSixtyBourgeoisMy GenerationThirty YearsTotemsTrampsNice GirlVamp
Book:Vamps & Tramps: New Essays
Create image

“In the west, Apollo and Dionysus strive for victory. Apollo makes the boundary lines that are civilization but that lead to convention, constraint, oppression. Dionysus is energy unbound, mad, callous, destructive, wasteful. Apollo is law, history, tradition, the dignity and safety of custom and form. Dionysus is the new, exhilarating but rude, sweeping all away to begin again. Apollo is a tyrant, Dionysus is a vandal.”

FormLawEnergyLinesVictoryCivilizationTraditionDignitySafetyMadWestStriveBoundariesOppressionDestructiveCustomsTyrantsConventionsRudeApolloConstraintsSweepingExhilaratingBegin AgainCallousDionysusUnboundVandals
Book:Sexual Personae
Create image

“Man is not merely the sum of his masks. Behind the shifting face of personality is a hard nugget of self, a genetic gift.... The self is malleable but elastic, snapping back to its original shape like a rubber band. Mental illness is no myth, as some have claimed. It is a disturbance in our sense of possession of a stable inner self that survives its personae.”

MenSelfHardFacesBehindsPersonalityShapesBandOriginalsIllnessPossessionMythMental IllnessMaskStableShiftingInner SelfRubberDisturbanceNuggetsSnappingRubber Bands
Book:Sex, Art, and American Culture: Essays
Create image

“French rhetorical models are too narrow for the English tradition. Most pernicious of French imports is the notion that there is no person behind a text. Is there anything more affected, aggressive, and relentlessly concrete than a Parisan intellectual behind his/her turgid text? The Parisian is a provincial when he pretends to speak for the universe.”

PersonsUniverseSpeakBehindsIntellectualModelsTraditionNotionAffectedAggressiveConcreteImportsPerniciousRhetorical
Book:Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson
Create image