Desdemona Quotes

I love you, Desdemona."
"I know," she whispered. "You don't have to say the words."
He smiled slowly. "Trust me, you're going to hear them every day for the rest of our lives. ~ Jayne Ann Krentz

It was still years before Desdemona, cutting cucumbers, would lean against the corner of the kitchen table and, without realizing it, would lean in a little harder, and after that would find herself taking up that position every day, the table corner snug between her legs. ~ Jeffrey Eugenides

Poor Desdemona! I am glad thy father's dead.
Thy match was mortal to him, and pure grief
Shore his old thread in twain. ~ William Shakespeare

There are no preconditions for jealousy. You don't have to be right, you don't have to be reasonable. Take Othello. He was neither right nor reasonable, and Desdemona ended up dead. I wouldn't mind Leanne ending up dead. I wouldn't mind exploding her into fireworks of peacock and pearl. ~ Franny Billingsley

If we divide human attributes into "masculine" and "feminine" and strengthen only those attributes that "belong" to that sex, we cut off half of ourselves from ourselves as human beings, condemned forever to search for our other half. The world is in desperate need of multilayered human beings with the voices, stamina, and insight to break through our current calcified ways of doing things, (...) The patriarchal structures of honor, shame, violence, and might is right, do as much harm to Hamlet, Edgar, Lear, and Coriolanus as they do to Ophelia, Desdemona, Lady Macduff (...)
(...) To have feelings, intuitive flights of understanding, a desire to have knowledge of what is happening below the surface, to serve. These are often called "feminine" attributes, and it is true that many women in the plays possess them. But they also belong to Kent, Ferdinand, Florizel, Camillo, as well as the women. So they are not "feminine" attributes: they are human attributes. ~ Tina Packer

DESDEMONA
Come, how wouldst thou praise me?

IAGO
I am about it; but indeed my invention
Comes from my pate as birdlime does from frieze;
It plucks out brains and all: but my Muse labours,
And thus she is deliver'd.
If she be fair and wise, fairness and wit,
The one's for use, the other useth it.

DESDEMONA
Well praised! How if she be black and witty?

IAGO
If she be black, and thereto have a wit,
She'll find a white that shall her blackness fit.

DESDEMONA
Worse and worse.

EMILIA
How if fair and foolish?

IAGO
She never yet was foolish that was fair;
For even her folly help'd her to an heir.

DESDEMONA
These are old fond paradoxes to make fools laugh i'
the alehouse. What miserable praise hast thou for
her that's foul and foolish?

IAGO
There's none so foul and foolish thereunto,
But does foul pranks which fair and wise ones do. ~ William Shakespeare

Adam leaned down and placed his lips next to her ear. He blew gently on it before he spoke. Mona leaned even closer into him as she listened intently to his words.
"Desdemona."
She moaned at the sound of her name on his lips.
"I need to tell you something." His words were accompanied by warm air caressing her skin.
"Before my time is done, I will watch the light fade from your eyes as you are sent to the hell you so deserve." Though his words promised destruction, the cadence of his voice still held her in a seductive rapture. ~ Quinn Loftis

And his unkindness may defeat my life, But never taint my love. ~ William Shakespeare

He stopped. She heard the intake of his breath. "You are my country, Desdemona." Yearning, harsh and poignant and she felt herself swaying toward him. "My Egypt. My hot, harrowing desert and my cool, verdant Nile, infinitely lovely and unfathomable and sustaining."
She gasped.
His gaze fell, shielded by his lashes. An odd, half-mocking smile played about his lips. "You'll never hear old Blake say something like that."
She swallowed, unable to speak, her senses abraded by his stimulating words, her pulse hammering in anticipation? Trepidation?
"Remember my words next time he calls you a bloody English rose. ~ Connie Brockway

Lefty had seen Desdemona undress many times, but usually as no more than a shadow and never in moonlight. She had never curled onto her back like this, lifting her feet to take off her shoes. He watched and, as she pulled down her skirt and lifted her tunic, was struck by how different his sister looked, in moonlight, in a lifeboat. She glowed. She gave off white light. He blinked behind his hands. The moonlight kept rising; it covered his neck, it reached his eyes until he understood: Desdemona was wearing a corset. That was the other thing she'd brought along: the white cloth enfolding her silkworm eggs was nothing other than Desdemona's wedding corset. She thought she'd never wear it, but here it was. Brassiere cups pointed up at the canvas roof. Whalebone slats squeezed her waist. The corset's skirt dropped garters attached to nothing because my grandmother owned no stockings. In the lifeboat, the corset absorbed all available moonlight, with the odd result that Desdemona's face, head, and arms disappeared. She looked like Winged Victory, tumbled on her back, being carted off to a conqueror's museum. All that was missing was the wings. ~ Jeffrey Eugenides

In those days you could identify a person's nationality by smell. Lying on her back with eyes closed, Desdemona could detect the telltale oniony aroma of a Hungarian woman on her right, and the raw-meat smell of an Armenian on her left. (And they, in turn, could peg Desdemona as a Hellene by her aroma of garlic and yogurt.) ~ Jeffrey Eugenides

Speak of me as I am; nothing extenuate,
Nor set down aught in malice: then must you speak
Of one that loved not wisely but too well;
Of one not easily jealous, but being wrought ~ William Shakespeare

This to hear
Would Desdemona seriously incline:
But still the house-affairs would draw her thence:
Which ever as she could with haste dispatch,
She'ld come again, and with a greedy ear
Devour up my discourse: which I observing,
Took once a pliant hour, and found good means
To draw from her a prayer of earnest heart
That I would all my pilgrimage dilate,
Whereof by parcels she had something heard,
But not intentively: I did consent,
And often did beguile her of her tears,
When I did speak of some distressful stroke
That my youth suffer'd. My story being done,
She gave me for my pains a world of sighs:
She swore, in faith, twas strange, 'twas passing strange,
'Twas pitiful, 'twas wondrous pitiful:
She wish'd she had not heard it, yet she wish'd
That heaven had made her such a man: she thank'd me,
And bade me, if I had a friend that loved her,
I should but teach him how to tell my story.
And that would woo her. Upon this hint I spake:
She loved me for the dangers I had pass'd,
And I loved her that she did pity them.
This only is the witchcraft I have used:
Here comes the lady; let her witness it. ~ William Shakespeare

Yippie ki-yay and all that shit"

- Desdemona Fox ~ Jonathan Maberry

DESDEMONA: I hope my noble lord esteems me honest.
OTHELLO: Oh, ay, as summer flies are in the shambles,
That quicken even with blowing. O thou weed,
Who art so lovely fair and smell'st so sweet
That the sense aches at thee, would thou hadst ne'er been born!
DESDEMONA: Alas, what ignorant sin have I committed?
OTHELLO: Was this fair paper, this most goodly book,
Made to write "whore" upon? ~ William Shakespeare

You are my country, Desdemona ... My Egypt. My hot, harrowing desert and my cool, verdant Nile, infinitely lovely and unfathomable and sustaining. ~ Connie Brockway

So will I turn her virtue into pitch,
And out of her own goodness make the net
That shall enmesh them all. ~ William Shakespeare

Lefty, who'd been observing all the ways Greece had been handed down to America, arrived now at where the transmission stopped. In other words: the future. He stepped off to meet it. Desdemona, having no alternative, followed. ~ Jeffrey Eugenides

Or in my grandparents's case, the circling worked like this: as they paced around the deck the first time, Lefty and Desdemona were still brother and sister. The second time, the were bride and bridegroom. And the third, they were husband and wife. ~ Jeffrey Eugenides

We become lovers when we see Romeo and Juliet, and Hamlet makes us students. The blood of Duncan is upon our hands, with Timon werage against the world, and when Lear wanders out upon the heath the terror of madness touches us. Ours is the white sinlessness of Desdemona, and ours, also, the sin of Iago. ~ Oscar Wilde

[Talking about Othello] His dying words are about the service he has done to the state -not what he has done to Desdemona. (...) He acknowledges not love but the power structure (...). Othello believes his fellow officer [Iago] rather than his wife, believes death is suitable punishment for infidelity (...).
It makes me uneasy that we so easily state that Othello is a play about race. Race is one of its ingredients, but the most pervasive subject that Shakespeare is tackling is sexism. The two women [Desdemona and Emilia, Iago's wife] end up dead. Bianca, the third woman in the play, Cassio's mistress, ends up in jail for something she never did, and nobody bothers to get her out. Iago, the symbol of evil, remains alive. Brabantio, Desdemona's father, dies of a broken heart because of his daughter's disobedience. And everyone is very regretful about what has happened. But no one, other than Emilia, has pointed out that there is a terrible double standard, something rotten in the system itself. ~ Tina Packer

We know now that most birth deformities result from the consanguinity of the parents."
"From the what?" asked Desdemona.
"From families intermarrying."
Desdemona went white.
"Causes all kinds of problems. Imbecility. Hemophilia. Look at the Romanovs. Look at any royal family. Mutants, all of them. ~ Jeffrey Eugenides

When devils will the blackest sins put on
They do suggest at first with heavenly shows ~ William Shakespeare

Willow trees, willow trees they remind me of Desdemona
I'm so damned literary
and at the same time the waters rushing past remind
me of nothing ~ Frank O'Hara