Mary Gordon > Quotes

“A fatherless girl thinks all things are possible, and nothing is safe.”
― Mary Gordon, The Company of Women

“People think I'm selling feminism in my books, but what I'm really doing is writing advertising copy for expensive private colleges that most women can't afford anyway. Oh, and try to find a job with a major in English literature. No luck? Joke's on you, sucker!”
― Mary Gordon, Conversations with Mary Gordon

“For the Irish, life is a matter of perpetual grievance. We remember the Famine, but forget the Draft Riots. We seal off our neighborhoods to strangers, but allow our own priests to victimize our own children. We worship violence and we enslave ourselves to alcohol, we lie and steal and kill without conscience for generations at a time. But it's all right in the end, and do you know why? Because we don't tolerate lust.”
― Mary Gordon, The Other Side

“Look, just because I'm an angry, repressed, Irish-Catholic feminist doesn't mean I hate everything. I only hate youth, beauty, the human body, nature, technological change, popular culture, and democracy. Oh, and I forgot to mention sex. And sports. And Andy Warhol. But other than that, I'm cool with whatever the kids are into. Really!”
― Mary Gordon, Conversations with Mary Gordon

“I sometimes find it difficult to distinguish praise from blame.”
― Mary Gordon, The Liar's Wife: Four Novellas

“All the Jane Austen in the library cannot wash the Queens from this little hand.”
― Mary Gordon, Good Boys and Dead Girls: And Other Essays

“Perhaps it is the intrusion of sexuality that marks the end of precision.”
― Mary Gordon, Final Payments

“About noon, an arrow entered Joan’s body, just above her left breast, at exactly the place she had prophesied to her confessor on her way from Chinon to Orléans. She fell back, in shock and in great pain. She wept, despite her foreknowledge of the nature of her wound. It is as though she were surprised, not that she had been struck by an arrow, but that it would hurt.”
― Mary Gordon, Joan of Arc

“One of the drawbacks of upward social mobility is a sense of guilty indebtedness to the old neighborhood.”
― Mary Gordon, Good Boys and Dead Girls: And Other Essays

“When I worry about plans, Lauro says, “Why not let the earth take a couple of turns.” As if he can hear it. The silent whirring in the cold, pure dark.”
― Mary Gordon, The Rest of Life: Three Novellas

“The fact of the matter is that you hate America; hate it with all the unrepentant, unreasoning fury of a Nazi stormtrooper or a southern slaveowner or a Syrian suicide bomber; have hated it since you were a sniveling schoolgirl in a shriveled up Irish backwater in Queens, since you were a spoiled college girl spitting in soldier's faces, since you first learned the awful truth that America has no use for pitiful imposters like you. You're not an aristocrat, Marian dear. You're an Irish potato farmer in a plumed hat, fighting for a white-columned mansion you never had and never will.”
― Mary Gordon, There Your Heart Lies

“The Catholic Church in America is the Irish church. It is our church, end of story. We built it. We paid for it. It is ours. No Mexicans need apply.”
― Mary Gordon, Good Boys and Dead Girls: And Other Essays