Adrienne Kress Quotes

Aw, man. I'd just shot an angel in the face.I made my way into the foyer and sat down on the stairs. I glanced up at the big old grandfather clock. It was going on ten. My folks would be home soon.
"How was your evening, honey?"
"Killed an angel."
"Well, isn't that nice."
That wasn't happening. Daddy never liked guns in the first place, Mother just pretended to. I was so grounded. ~ Adrienne Kress

Then he smiled. It was the first time I'd seen him smile, and it threw me. It was kind of…awesome.
He spoke: "I can see through your dress."
"What?" I said automatically.
"The light coming from behind you like that. Can see right through it." The smile widened.
"I…"
"Look, I'm not complaining. And since you haven't moved, I'm guessing you don't mind me looking."
I had no idea what to do, so I stumbled further into the shed and walked to the side into the dark so I wasn't being backlit anymore.
"And you've come inside, so you want to be closer to me."
"No!" This I shouted a little too loudly. And to prove how "no" I was, I pointed the shears at him.
"You gonna cut it off?" He raised an eyebrow.
"Cut what off?" Damn it. I had to stop answering him automatically like that. Think before you speak, Riley. Think!The young man glanced down at himself, and I almost followed his look until I remembered that he was totally naked, and then I understood what he meant.God, no, I hadn't even thought of that! Who did he think I was?Maybe the girl who shot him in the face maybe? ~ Adrienne Kress

And then there was an explosion. ~ Adrienne Kress

Her brain, which had up until then still been in the shower, toweled off and joined her on the beach. It whispered a tiny thought to her and then went to dry its hair. ~ Adrienne Kress

Did you shoot me again sweetheart? ~ Adrienne Kress

When you are from a well-respected family, often times you will have pressure to "live up to your family name." That is to say, depending on your family's reputation, you will have to live in accordance with that reputation so that other people keep thinking of your family in the way it is used to being thought of. If you come from a family of do-gooders, then it is important to do good. If you come from a family of investors, it is important to make lots of money. If you come from a family of plastic surgeons, you should know how to pick a nose. And if you do not live up to your family name, then possibly your family will disown you. Which isn't really nice, but can happen. ~ Adrienne Kress

He would rock back and forth in his chair, making sure it squeaked ominously. He always found a chair that squeaked ominously. He was so good at squeaking ominously that he managed to make year-six teacher number two burst into tears. ~ Adrienne Kress

we as authors have been writing about people we aren't for forever. We find a way to empathise, we find a way in. Female characters are no different. All they are are characters. They are people too. Instead of asking yourself, "How do I write this female soldier?" ask yourself, "How do I write this soldier? Where is she from, how was she raised, does she have a sense of humour? Is she big and tall, is she short and petite? How does her size affect her ability to fight? What is her favourite weapon, her least favourite? Why? Is she more logical than emotional? The other way around? Was she an only child and spoiled, was she the eldest of six siblings and a surrogate mother? How does that upbringing affect how she interacts with her team? etc etc and so forth." Notice how the first question gets you some kind of broad, generalised answer, likely resulting in a stereotype, and how the second version asks lots and lots of smaller questions with the goal of creating someone well rounded.

One would hope, really, that we as authors ask such detailed questions of all our characters, regardless of gender.


So let me, at long last, actually answer the original question:

"How do I write a female character?"

Write her the way you would write any other character. Give her dimension, give her strength but please also don't forget to give her weaknesses (for a totally strong nothing can beat her kind of girl is not a person, she's again a ty ~ Adrienne Kress

You would be forgiven for thinking Alex Morningside was a boy. In fact, she would be the first to laugh at this, because, for one thing, she wasn't, and for another, she had an Excellent Sense of Humour. It wasn't that she wanted to be a boy or anything, it was simply that she didn't see much difference in being treated as a girl or boy. Because, after all, everyone is just people.
One of the reasons people thought she was a boy was her haircut. Her haircut looked like someone had put a bowl on her head and cut around it. Which is exactly what her uncle had done. Also, they thought she was a boy because her name was Alex. Of course, Alex was short for Alexandra, but neither Alex nor her uncle liked that very much, so they shortened the name. They could have shortened it the other was I suppose - Andra - but she and her uncle preferred Alex. ~ Adrienne Kress

I had the best image of several dragons sitting on a couch crying into a microphone ... ~ Adrienne Kress

Sing 'em to remember.
Sing 'em because you remember. ~ Adrienne Kress

Poetry can open locked chambers of possibiity, restore numbed zones to feeling, recharge desire. ~ Adrienne Rich

The difficulty of saying I-a phrase from the East German novelist Christa Wolf. But once having said it, as we realize the necessity to go further, isn't there a difficulty of saying 'we'? You cannot speak for me. I cannot speak for you. Two thoughts: there is no liberation that only knows how to say 'I'; there is no collective movement that speaks for each of us all the way through. ~ Adrienne Rich

For now, poetry has the capacity - in its own ways and by its own means - to remind us of something we are forbidden to see. ~ Adrienne Rich

There is always an unspeakable where, perhaps, the nucleus of the living relation between the poem and the world resides. ~ Adrienne Rich

Since we're not young, weeks have to do time for years of missing each other.Yet only this odd warp in time tells me we're not young. ~ Adrienne Rich

Perhaps many white North Americans fear an overtly political art because it might persuade us emotionally of what we think we are "rationally" against; it might get us on a level we have lost touch with; undermine the safety we have built for oneselves, remind us of what is better left forgotten. ~ Adrienne Rich

When I find a fashion formula I love, I tend to stick to it. There's nothing wrong with wearing a look over and over again, if it suits you and makes you feel great. ~ Adrienne Maloof

World-wide warming moved tropical diseases into northern areas which had no defenses against them. ~ Nancy Kress

Well,
she's long about her coming, who must be
more merciless to herself than history.
Her mind full to the wind, I see her plunge
breasted and glancing through the currents,
taking the light upon her
at least as beautiful as any boy
or helicopter,
poised, still coming,
her fine blades making the air wince

but her cargo
no promise then:
delivered
palpable
ours. ~ Adrienne Rich

Weather abroad
and weather in the heart alike come on
Regardless of prediction. ~ Adrienne Rich

It is the suffering of ambivalence: the murderous alternation between bitter resentment and raw-edged nerves, and blissful gratification and tenderness ~ Adrienne Rich

It was funny in a way, but only in the unhumorous way anything recent was funny. In another 80 years, maybe she would find it hilarious. ~ Nancy Kress

Throw enough scientific gibberish at non-scientists and they always faltered. ~ Nancy Kress

Nothing can be done but by inches. I write out my life hour by hour, word by word ... imagining the existence of something uncreated this poem our lives. ~ Adrienne Rich

To do something very common, in my own way. ~ Adrienne Rich

I think poets should work in the non-literary, non-academic world, get to know more than a workshop or a university. ~ Adrienne Rich

Let's go with the wheat and rye. She's shorter than me so looking up should throw her off her game." "Are you hiding the bread?" "If I don't hide the bread, then she'll think she's won." Morgan pushed the cart over to the produce. ~ Adrienne Wilder

It was the first time I discovered that some girls actually sneak out of the house during slumber parties and meet up with boys. I would've never known if I hadn't gone to the bathroom at midnight and caught Macy and Adrienne climbing through the bathroom window. They had on eyeliner, perfume, and cut-off shorts. Their only goodbye a glare that promised retribution if I didn't keep my mouth shut. ~ Laura Anderson Kurk

Any woman who has moved from the playing fields of male discourse into the realm where women are developing our own descriptions of the world knows the extraordinary sense of shedding, as it were, the encumbrance of someone else's baggage, of ceasing to translate. ~ Adrienne Rich

The password is a flicker of an eyelash. ~ Adrienne Rich

The Amazons is a stupendous achievement
a long-anticipated centerpiece in the great puzzle of humankind. The story of these forbidden women, silenced for so long by the rigidity of traditional scholarship, is as exciting and surprising as a bestselling murder mystery; I simply couldn't put it down. Through scholarly brilliance and passion, Adrienne Mayor has opened the door to a forgotten world of gender equality, and her book ought to be required reading in every college history course. ~ Anne Fortier

grandiose paranoid schizophrenia. ~ Nancy Kress

WHAT KIND OF TIMES ARE THESE

There's a place between two stands of trees where the grass grows uphill
and the old revolutionary road breaks off into shadows
near a meeting-house abandoned by the persecuted
who disappeared into those shadows.

I've walked there picking mushrooms at the edge of dread, but don't be fooled
this isn't a Russian poem, this is not somewhere else but here,
our country moving closer to its own truth and dread,
its own ways of making people disappear.

I won't tell you where the place is, the dark mesh of the woods
meeting the unmarked strip of light -
ghost-ridden crossroads, leafmold paradise:
I know already who wants to buy it, sell it, make it disappear.

And I won't tell you where it is, so why do I tell you
anything? Because you still listen, because in times like these
to have you listen at all, it's necessary
to talk about trees. ~ Adrienne Rich

We have experienced what it's like to release any assumption that one person has all the skills needed to lead and support the work. ~ Adrienne Maree Brown

It's not easy, though, singing upside down in a headstand on a raised platform with your unfettered breasts hitting you in the chin. ~ Adrienne Barbeau

It was then I knew. Staring into those eyes. Eyes that saw where no man could. I was falling for him. I take that back. I'd already fallen for him. I couldn't say when it happened or how. There at the doorway, before in the truck, at the diner, at the movie, but it didn't matter.
My heart was his. ~ Adrienne Wilder

in a curious and unanticipated way, we really do welcome the birth of our child. There ~ Adrienne Rich

Storytelling unfolds mystery and magic. ~ Adrienne Posey

The first step in learning to love others is the attempt to understand them. ~ Adrienne Von Speyr

One attacks those who possess things that one does not possess. The attack is all the more savage because the one who attacks is destitute and the one who is attacked is well provided. The one who attacks always considers himself to be in the position of legitimate offense. ~ Adrienne Monnier

My children cause me the most exquisite suffering of which I have any experience. It is the suffering of ambivalence: the murderous alternation between bitter resentment and raw-edged nerves, and blissful gratification and tenderness. Sometimes I seem to myself, in my feelings toward these tiny guiltless beings, a monster of selfishness and intolerance. ~ Adrienne Rich

There is no greater pleasure than winning a competition with one's sister and no greater sorrow than to see her suffer because of it. ~ Adrienne Sharp

The I you know isn't me, you said, truthtelling liar
My roots are not my chains
And I to you: Whose hands have grown
through mine? Owl-voiced I cried then: Who?
But yours was the one, the only eye assumed
Did we turn each other into liars?
holding hands with each others' chains? ~ Adrienne Rich

I do not know
who I was when I did those things
or who I said I was
or whether I willed to feel
what I had read about
or who in fact was there with me
or whether I knew, even then
that there was doubt about these things ~ Adrienne Rich

I see my sister, and she's on her second baby, and I'm like, 'That's success.' Having a family - I can't wait for that. ~ Adrienne Bailon

The best thing a man can do on a first date is be a friend. I think that's the biggest mistake men make on the first date. Just get to know me. Be my friend. Just kick it with me as if I was hanging with a homeboy. It shouldn't be this awkward situation. It should be that we're there, having a great time. ~ Adrienne Bailon

Caring is weakness, and weakness is death. ~ Adrienne DeWolfe

Abstract art: a construction site for high fashion, for advertising, for furniture. ~ Adrienne Monnier

The [Vietnam War Memorial] Wall became a magnet for citizens of every generation, class, race, and relationship to the war perhaps because it is the only great public monument that allows the anesthetized holes in the heart to fill with a truly national grief. ~ Adrienne Rich

We are in an imagination battle.

Trayvon Martin and Mike Brown and Renisha McBride and so many others are dead because, in some white imagination, they were dangerous. And that imagination is so respected that those who kill, based on an imagined, radicalized fear of Black people, are rarely held accountable.

Imagination has people thinking they can go from being poor to a millionaire as part of a shared American dream. Imagination turns Brown bombers into terrorists and white bombers into mentally ill victims. Imagination gives us borders, gives us superiority, gives us race as an indicator of ability. I often feel I am trapped inside someone else's capability. I often feel I am trapped inside someone' else's imagination, and I must engage my own imagination in order to break free. ~ Adrienne Maree Brown

The ocean, whose tides respond, like women's menses, to the pull of the moon, the ocean which corresponds to the amniotic fluid in which human life begins, the ocean on whose surface vessels (personified as female) can ride but in whose depth sailors meet their death and monsters conceal themselves ... it is unstable and threatening as the earth is not; it spawns new life daily, yet swallows up lives; it is changeable like the moon, unregulated, yet indestructible and eternal. ~ Adrienne Rich

strange attractor - do ~ Nancy Kress

Until we know the assumptions in which we are drenched, we cannot know ourselves. ~ Adrienne Rich

Here was a man who defied all odds, lived by himself, worked, created beautiful art. A complex mind stumped by some of the simplest tasks.
If he could, he would keep trying until there was only absolute failure or success.
How many people could say that? ~ Adrienne Wilder

Miri once told me that there were only four important ques­tions you could ask about any human being: How does he fill up his time? How does he feel about how he fills up his time? What does he love? How does he react to those he perceives as either inferior or superior to him?

If you make people feel inferior, even unintentionally," she had said, her dark eyes intense, "they will be uncomfortable around you. In that situation, some people will attack. Some will ridicule, to 'cut you down to size.' But some will admire, and learn from you. If you make people feel superior, some will react by dis­missing you. Some by wielding power - just because they can - in greater or lesser ways. But some will be moved to protect and help. All this is just as true of a junior lodge clique as of a group of governments. ~ Nancy Kress

As a woman I have a country; as a woman I cannot divest myself of that country merely bu condemning its government or by saying three times "As a woman my country is the whole world." -Notes Towards a Politics of Location. ~ Adrienne Rich

There is a cop who is both prowler and father:
he comes from your block, grew up with your brothers,
had certain ideals. ~ Adrienne Rich

People really get myopic as they get older. We're not a culture that encourages dreaming or distraction. We're not ever good at just being. I remember reading some Adrienne Rich quote where she talks about how important it was just to watch bubbles rise in a glass. ~ Karen Russell

Home felt an entire world away. ~ Adrienne Young