Jane Rule Quotes

Quotes about:

• People genuinely happy in their choices seem less often tempted to force them on other people than those who feel martyred and broken by their lives.

  Jane Rule

  Broken Heart, People, Choices

  Jane Rule (2013). “Lesbian Images: Essays”, p.14, Open Road Media

  46 Copy quote

• It's not the length but the quality of life that matters to me. It has always been important to me to write one sentence at a time, to live every day as if it were my last and judge it in those terms, often badly, not because it lacked grand gesture or grand passion but because it failed in the daily virtues of self-discipline, kindness, and laughter. It is love, very ordinary, human love, and not fear, which is the good teacher and the wisest judge.

  Jane Rule

  Love, Teacher, Kindness

  9 Copy quote

• The kinds of good friends I have are people who are perfectly willing to have me say I'll see them in six months, and live right next door.

  Jane Rule

  Friends, Good Friend, Doors

  5 Copy quote

• My private measure of success is daily. If this were to be the last day of my life would I be content with it? To live in a harmonious balance of commitments and pleasures is what I strive for.

  Jane Rule

  Success, Commitment, Balance

  11 Copy quote

• I've never been resigned to ready-made ideas as I was to ready-made clothes, perhaps because although I couldn't sew, I could think.

  Jane Rule

  Thinking, Ideas, Clothes

  7 Copy quote

• Knowledge is a collective enterprise. Without it understanding is impossible. Ignorance is too often a murderous vulnerability.

  Jane Rule

  Ignorance, Knowledge, Understanding

  Jane Rule (2013). “Outlander: Short Stories and Essays”, p.193, Open Road Media

  5 Copy quote

• Every artist seems to me to have the job of bearing witness to the world we live in. To some extent I think of all of us as artists, because we have voices and we are each of us unique.

  Jane Rule

  Art, Jobs, Thinking

  25 Copy quote

• To live in a harmonious balance of commitments and pleasures is what I strive for.

  Jane Rule

  Commitment, Balance, Pleasure

  10 Copy quote

• If the tenth of the population that is gay became visible tomorrow, the panic of the majority of people would inspire repressive legislation of a sort that would shock even the pessimists among us.

  Jane Rule

  Gay, People, Inspire

  Jane Rule (2013). “Outlander: Short Stories and Essays”, p.247, Open Road Media

  7 Copy quote

• Morality, like language, is an invented structure for conserving and communicating order. And morality is learned, like language, by mimicking and remembering.

  Jane Rule

  Order, Mimicking, Ethics

  Jane Rule (2013). “Lesbian Images: Essays”, p.20, Open Road Media

  7 Copy quote

• If we don't bear witness as citizens, as people, as individuals, the right that we have had to life is sacrificed. There is a silence, instead of a speaking presence.

  Jane Rule

  Life, People, Silence

  8 Copy quote

• I didn't want to be a boy, ever, but I was outraged that his height and intelligence were graces for him and gaucheries for me.

  Jane Rule

  Boys, Feminist, Grace

  Jane Rule (2013). “Lesbian Images: Essays”, p.9, Open Road Media

  15 Copy quote

• The message of women's liberation is that women can love each other and ourselves against our degrading education.

  Jane Rule

  Education, Aggravation, Messages

  Jane Rule (2013). “A Hot-Eyed Moderate: Essays”, p.140, Open Road Media

  24 Copy quote

• Love is the terrible secret people are suspected of unless they're married, then one always suspects they don't.

  Jane Rule

  Love Is, People, Secret Love

  Jane Rule (2013). “Against the Season: A Novel”, p.234, Open Road Media

  4 Copy quote

• Morality is a test of our conformity rather than our integrity.

  Jane Rule

  Integrity, Tests, Morality

  Jane Rule (2013). “Lesbian Images: Essays”, p.21, Open Road Media

  11 Copy quote

• Now that our sexual experience is increasingly available to us as a subject for contemplation, we have to extend our language to express our new consciousness until we have as many words for sexuality as the Eskimo has for snow, that pervasive, beautiful, and mortal climate in which we all live.

  Jane Rule

  Beautiful, Sex, Snow

  Jane Rule (1981). “Outlander”, Tallahassee, Fla. : Naiad Press

  7 Copy quote

• I had always said to myself that forty was the cut off point of my apprenticeship which may for some people sound like a very long one, but the novel as art is a middle-aged art.

  Jane Rule

  Art, Cutting, Long

  7 Copy quote

• casino owners spoke more loudly than any of the other kings of industry to defend their contribution to society. They could speak more loudly because theirs was the purest activity of civilized man. They had transcended the need for a product. They could maintain and advance life with machines that made nothing but money.

  Jane Rule

  Kings, Men, Gambling

  Jane Rule (2013). “Desert of the Heart: A Novel”, p.223, Open Road Media

  4 Copy quote

• Coming out, all the way out, is offered more and more as the political solution to our oppression. The argument goes that, if people could see just how many of us there are, some in very important places, the negative stereotype would vanish overnight. ...It is far more realistic to suppose that, if the tenth of the population that is gay became visible tomorrow, the panic of the majority of people would inspire repressive legislation of a sort that would shock even the pessimists among us.

  Jane Rule

  Gay, People, Political

  Jane Rule (2013). “Outlander: Short Stories and Essays”, p.247, Open Road Media

  4 Copy quote

• Morality for the novelist is expressed not so much in the choice of subject matter as in the plot of the narrative, which is perhaps why in our morally bewildered time novelists have often been timid about plot.

  Jane Rule

  Choices, Novelists, Plot

  Jane Rule (1981). “Outlander”, Tallahassee, Fla. : Naiad Press

  4 Copy quote

• The real power of books is their deep companionability. We learn from them as we learn from the deep companionability of love to know our own hearts and minds better.

  Jane Rule

  Real, Book, Heart

  Jane Rule (2013). “A Hot-Eyed Moderate: Essays”, p.122, Open Road Media

  5 Copy quote

• Human beings tolerate what they understand they have to tolerate.

  Jane Rule

  Tolerate, Humans, Human Beings

  Jane Rule (2013). “Outlander: Short Stories and Essays”, p.236, Open Road Media

  4 Copy quote

• I was very frightened when I turned forty. I suddenly thought I ought to wake up and be speaking with the voice of God.

  Jane Rule

  Voice, Wake Up, Frightened

  4 Copy quote

• I remember how surprised I was when my first novel was about to be published and I was informed that I could be sued for anything any one of my characters said. 'But I often don't agree with what they say,' I protested. The lawyer was not interested in the clear distinction I make between my own voice and the voices of my characters. Neither, I have found, are many of my readers.

  Jane Rule

  Character, Voice, Firsts

  Jane Rule (2013). “Outlander: Short Stories and Essays”, p.213, Open Road Media

  4 Copy quote

• Conventions, like clichés, have a way of surviving their own usefulness.

  Jane Rule

  Way, Conventions, Surviving

  Jane Rule (2013). “Desert of the Heart: A Novel”, p.4, Open Road Media

  4 Copy quote

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