Writers in a profit making economy are an exploitable commodity whose works are products to be marketed, and are so judged and handled.
Tillie OlsenIt's hard for me to talk about the terrible things that have happened in my lifetime because they didn't need to be.
Tillie OlsenMore than in any other human relationship, overwhelmingly more, motherhood means being instantly interruptible, responsive, and responsible
Tillie OlsenBetter mankind born without mouths and stomachs than always to worry about money to buy, to shop, to fix, to cook, to wash, to clean.
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