I could not live by literature if only to begin with, because of the slow maturing of my work and its special character.
Tillie OlsenThink about all that we've lost that has been said orally because nobody was taking it down. I feel very fortunate to live in a time where we have so many different voices. We have a much richer literature than we've ever had, and we can know America so much better.
Tillie OlsenMore than in any other human relationship, overwhelmingly more, motherhood means being instantly interruptible, responsive, and responsible
Tillie OlsenThe habits of a lifetime when everything else had to come before writing are not easily broken, even when circumstances now often make it possible for writing to be first; habits of years - responses to others, distractibility, responsibility for daily matters - stay with you, mark you, become you. The cost of discontinuity (that pattern still imposed on women) is such a weight of things unsaid, an accumulation of material so great, that everything starts up something else in me; what should take weeks take me sometimes months to write; what should take months, takes years.
Tillie Olsen