"Literary history and the present are dark with……" — Tillie Olsen

"Literary history and the present are dark with silences . . . I have had special need to learn all I could of this over the years, myself so nearly remaining mute and having to let writing die over and over again in me. These are not natural silences--what Keats called agonie ennuyeuse (the tedious agony)--that necessary time for renewal, lying fallow, gestation, in the natural cycle of creation. The silences I speak of here are unnatural: the unnatural thwarting of what struggles to come into being, but cannot."

— Tillie Olsen

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15 Quotes by Tillie Olsen

Tillie Olsen has 15 quotes on this site. A few more worth reading:

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More Agony Quotes

This quote is filed under Agony Quotes, one of 456 quotes in that category. Here are a few more:

Godly sorrow is a gift of the Spirit. It is a deep realization that our actions have offended our Father… — Ezra Taft Benson
There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you. — Maya Angelou
In agony or danger, no nature is atheist. The mind that knows not what to fly to, flies to God. — Hannah More
Can Jesus Christ see the agony of His soul in us? He can't unless we are so closely identified with… — Oswald Chambers
Since I only got one life to ive, God forgive me for my sins, let me make it and i'll… — Tupac Shakur
You learn more from ten days of agony than from ten years of content. — Sally Jessy Raphael
All life is interrelated. The agony of the poor impoverishes the rich; the betterment of the poor enriches the rich.… — Martin Luther King, Jr.
In default of inexhaustible happiness, eternal suffering would at least give us a destiny. But we do not even have… — Albert Camus
There are confessable agonies, sufferings of which one can positively be proud. Of bereavement, of parting, of the sense of… — Aldous Huxley
The thorn is a bridge spanning the muddy depths of agony and sorrow so that one may on the other… — Aberjhani
Man's unique agony as a species consists in his perpetual conflict between the desire to stand out and the need… — Sydney J. Harris
Controlled hysteria is what's required. To exist constantly in a state of controlled hysteria. It's agony. But everyone has agony.… — Arthur Miller

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