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Book: Women Talking
Quotes of Book: Women Talking
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  1. Miriam Toews _ Women Talking

    Ona protests, quietly, that she doesn't believe that at all. She doesn't believe in authority, period, because authority makes people cruel. Salome interrupts: The people with authority or the people without?
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  2. Miriam Toews _ Women Talking

    Salome interrupts. We're not members! she repeats. We are the women of Molotschna. The entire colony of Molotschna is built on the foundation of patriarchy {translator's note: Salome didn't use the word "patriarchy" - I inserted it in the place of Salome's curse, of mysterious origin, loosely translated as "talking through the flowers"}, where the women live our their days as mute, submissive, and obedient servants. Animals. Fourteen-year-old boys are expected to give us orders, to determine our fates, to vote on our excommunications, to speak at the burials of our own babies while we remain silent, to interpret the Bible for us, to lead us in worship, to punish us! We are not members, Mariche. We are commodities.
    book-quotewomenreligion

  3. Miriam Toews _ Women Talking

    Perhaps all of us are crazy, Ona says. Of course we're all crazy, says Mejal. How can we not be?
    book-quotefeminismreligion

  4. Miriam Toews _ Women Talking

    I find it curious that she hasn't been excommunicated. Are her small acts of rebellion a convenient outlet for Peters, a type of performance that satisfies the colonists' need to assert themselves, and that allows Peters to act with impunity on a larger scale?
    book-quotereligion

  5. Miriam Toews _ Women Talking

    Surely, she says, encouraging others to lie on our behalves must be a worse sin than lying ourselves.
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  6. Miriam Toews _ Women Talking

    No, no, said the librarian, forgiven for being alive, for being in the world. For the arrogance and the futility of remaining alive, the ridiculousness of it, the stench of it, the unreasonableness of it.
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  7. Miriam Toews _ Women Talking

    The truth is, I don't have a catchy method of conversing and yet unfortunately suffer of a minute to minute basis the agony of the unexpressed thought.
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  8. Miriam Toews _ Women Talking

    None of us have ever asked the men for anything, Agata states. Not a single thing, not even for the salt to be passed, not even for a penny or a moment alone or to take the washing in or to open a curtain or to go easy on the small yearlings or to put your hand on the small of my back as I try, again, for the twelfth or thirteenth time, to push a baby out of my body.
    book-quotemotherhood

  9. Miriam Toews _ Women Talking

    We are wasting time, pleads Greta, by passing this burden, this sack of stones, from one to the next, by pushing our pain away. We mustn't do this. We mustn't play Hot Potato with our pain. Let's absorb it ourselves, each of us, she says. Let's inhale it, let's digest it, let's process it into fuel.
    book-quotefeminismpainpower

  10. Miriam Toews _ Women Talking

    All we women have are our dreams – so of course we are dreamers.
    book-quoteinspirationalwomen

  11. Miriam Toews _ Women Talking

    The sun is setting, Ona reminds us, and our light is fading. We should light the kerosene lamp.But what of your question? asks Greta. Should we consider asking the men to leave? None of us have ever asked the men for anything, Agatha states. Not a single thing, not even for the salt to be passed, not even for a penny or a moment alone or to take the washing in or to open a curtain or to go easy on the small yearlings or to put your hand on the small of my back as I try, again, for the twelfth or thirteenth time, to push a baby out of my body. Isn't it interesting, she says, that the one and only request the women would make of the men would be to leave? The women break out laughing again.They simply can't stop laughing, and if one of them stops for a moment she will quickly resume laughing with a loud burst, and off they'll all go again. It's not an option, says Agata, at last. No, the others {finally in complete accord!} agree. Asking the men to leave is not an option. Greta asks the women to imagine her team, Ruth and Cheryl {Agata yelps in exasperation at the mention of their names}, requesting that Greta leave them alone for the day to graze in the field and do nothing. Imagine my hens, adds Agata, telling me to turn around and leave the premises when I show up to gather the eggs. Ona begs the women to stop making her laugh, she's afraid she'll go into premature labour. This makes them laugh harder! They even find it uproariously funny that I continue to write during all of this. Ona's laughter is the finest, the most exquisite sound in all of nature, filled with breath and promise, and the only sound she releases into the world that she doesn't also try to retrieve.
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  12. Miriam Toews _ Women Talking

    Between 2005-2009, more than 300 girls and women of Molotschna were made unconscious and attacked in their own beds. On average, an attack occurred every three or four days.Finally, Leisl Neustandter forced herself to stay awake night after night until she caught a young man prying open her bedroom window, holding a jug of belladonna spray in one hand. Leisl and her adult daughter wrestled the man to the ground and tied him up with baler twine.
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