Lynn Cullen > Quotes

“First you must believe there is a soul."

"Do you?"

"If by a soul one means the creature who lives within each of us, a creature born loving, born joyful, but who with each wordly blow shrinks more deeply into its shell until at last, the poor desiccated thing is unrecognizable, even to its own self, yes. I do.”
― Lynn Cullen, Mrs. Poe

“Every heart, it have its own ache.”
― Lynn Cullen, The Creation of Eve

“The principled man is merely one whose ancestors were ruthlessly unprincipled, affording him the option of acting upon fine sentiments.”
― Lynn Cullen, Mrs. Poe

“Magdalena pulls me away by the arm. “I am the stronger one of Titus and I,” she says over the marketplace din. “Woman are always the stronger sex.” She smiles to herself. “The trick is not appearing to be so.”
― Lynn Cullen, I Am Rembrandt's Daughter

“Madness,” he said quietly, “is as a drop of ink in water. It sends sly tendrils from the afflicted person into everyone around until all are shaded in black. Soon one does not know who is mad and who is not.”
― Lynn Cullen, Mrs. Poe

“It is as if producing a creative work tears a piece from your soul. When it is ripped completely free of you, the wound must bleed for a while. How similar it is to letting go of a dream, your hope, or your heart’s desire. You must open up and let it drain.”
― Lynn Cullen, Mrs. Poe

“You and I are poets, Mrs. Osgood. Our job is to raise questions, not to answer them.”
― Lynn Cullen, Mrs. Poe

“People want to be titillated or frightened. They don't want to think.”
― Lynn Cullen, Mrs. Poe

“Tell me,” said Miss Fuller, “who is behind a great woman?” She looked around our circle, then stopped at me. “That’s right. No one. She has to get there by herself.”
― Lynn Cullen, Mrs. Poe

“In painting, three things must be considered - the position of the viewer, the position of the object viewed, and the position of the light that illuminates the object.”
― Lynn Cullen, The Creation of Eve

“Tell me, who is behind a great woman? That's right. No one. She has to get there herself.”
― Lynn Cullen, I Am Rembrandt's Daughter

“Fortunate is the person who can succeed in extracting honey from such a flower as this life, whose root and every petal is bitterness.”
― Lynn Cullen, Mrs. Poe

“Pay attention to fate, Mrs. Osgood. It will always have the last word.”
― Lynn Cullen, Mrs. Poe

“I find that the thoughts spoken between the lines are the most important parts of a poem or story.”
― Lynn Cullen, Mrs. Poe

“Whenever you see this much wealth, assume that someone dirtied his hands. Fortunes don't come to saints.”
― Lynn Cullen, Mrs. Poe

“Americans are being poisoned, all in the name of profit, producing a weak-minded race of people who are given to lust and desire.”
― Lynn Cullen, Mrs. Poe

“Whenever you see this much wealth, assume that someone dirtied his hands. Fortunes don’t come to saints.”
― Lynn Cullen, Mrs. Poe

“If by a soul one means the creature who lives within each of us, a creature born loving, born joyful, but who with each worldly blow shrinks more deeply into its shell until at last, the poor desiccated thing is unrecognizable even to its own self, yes. I do.”
― Lynn Cullen, Mrs. Poe

“Did Mr. Poe write as a boy?

Dear me, yes. It was all he had, what with losing his mother as a toddling child and then being cast aside by his foster father. I think sometimes his pen was his only friend in the world”
― Lynn Cullen, Mrs. Poe

“What did I expect him to say--that he would leave his wife? To do so was the province of fiction. Real life was not as easy as that.”
― Lynn Cullen, Mrs. Poe

“ITEM: In seeking an answer to a quandary, one must consider the Law of Parsimony, proposed by the English monk William of Ockham. Translated from the Latin: “All things being equal, the simplest solution is the best.”
― Lynn Cullen, The Creation of Eve

“It is my belief that marriage is made holy by two souls in communion, not by the order of the law.”
― Lynn Cullen, Mrs. Poe

“ITEM: The Seven Deadly Sins and the colors associated with them in painting: Pride—Violet
Envy—Green
Anger—Red
Sloth—Light Blue
Greed—Yellow
Gluttony—Orange
Lust—Blue”
― Lynn Cullen, The Creation of Eve

“People don't want to be titillated or frightened. They don't want to think.”
― Lynn Cullen, Mrs. Poe

“The unspoken truth was that New Yorkers considered everyone in the world to be just a tad - well, more than just a tad, a lot more than a tad - old-fashioned compared with themselves.”
― Lynn Cullen, Mrs. Poe

“She, Henry Horesman's daughter, was to tell the most important person in this behemoth country, whether or not the vaccine that he'd allowed every person under the age of 20 in the USSR to take (a mind boggling 77 million young people), a vaccine given to him by a scientist from his archenemy - the US - was safe and effective?

If it was a flop, or if she misrepresented its efficacy, there would be world war.”
― Lynn Cullen, The Woman With the Cure

“Amother is always a mother. It is a role that changes but gets no easier over time.”
― Lynn Cullen, The Woman With the Cure

“To say that he 'nailed a subject's soul to the canvas' makes the assumption that we persons, as well as artists, can see one another's souls.

Maybe we do. Maybe we all have the ability to perceive another's soul, and do so every day, only we take it for granted, and don't even know it when we're doing it. We call it knowing someone's 'character' or 'personality.”
― Lynn Cullen, Mrs. Poe

“Only the rich, he said not a little bitterly, can afford to act like income does not matter.”
― Lynn Cullen, Mrs. Poe

“Greed and our food supply. It is greed that compels dairymen to skim every bit of goodness from milk to make other products and then to fill the swill left with chalk and sell it at profit. Greed tempts butchers to grind up the meat of sick cows with well ones and mix it into sausage along with offal and dung to extend the amount of 'meat' that they can sell. Greed motivates bakers to use flour devoid of the wheat germ and the nutritious outer husk and to add alum and chlorine to make bread look whiter and to cook faster. Americans are being poisoned, all in the name of profit, producing a weak-minded race of people who are given to lust and desire.”
― Lynn Cullen, Mrs. Poe