Molly Haskell Quotes

• Language: the one tool that enables us to grasp hold of our lives and transcend our fate by understanding it.

  Molly Haskell

  Fate, Understanding, Tools

  45 Copy quote

• The big lie perpetrated on Western society is the idea of women’s inferiority, a lie so deeply ingrained in our social behaviour that merely to recognize it is to risk unravelling the entire fabric of civilization.

  Molly Haskell

  Lying, Civilization, Ideas

  Molly Haskell (2016). “From Reverence to Rape: The Treatment of Women in the Movies, Third Edition”, p.1, University of Chicago Press

  14 Copy quote

• There are two cinemas: the films we have actually seen and the memories we have of them.

  Molly Haskell

  Movie, Memories, Two

  Molly Haskell (2016). “From Reverence to Rape: The Treatment of Women in the Movies, Third Edition”, p.42, University of Chicago Press

  10 Copy quote

• There are very few heroines in literature who have defined their lives morally rather than romantically and likewise but a handful in film.

  Molly Haskell

  Literature, Film, Heroines

  10 Copy quote

• But one of the attributes of love, like art, is to bring harmony and order out of chaos, to introduce meaning and affect where before there was none, to give rhythmic variations, highs and lows to a landscape that was previously flat.

  Molly Haskell

  Love, Art, Order

  Molly Haskell (2016). “From Reverence to Rape: The Treatment of Women in the Movies, Third Edition”, p.27, University of Chicago Press

  16 Copy quote

• Being alone and liking it is, for a woman, an act of treachery, an infidelity far more threatening than adultery.

  Molly Haskell

  Solitude, Infidelity, Adultery

  Molly Haskell (1992). “Love and Other Infectious Diseases: A Memoir”, Citadel Press

  10 Copy quote

• As so often happens in marriage, roles that had begun almost playfully, to give line and shape to our lives, had hardened like suits of armor and taken us prisoner.

  Molly Haskell

  Marriage, Taken, Suits Of Armor

  Molly Haskell (2000). “Love and Other Infectious Diseases: A Memoir”, p.12, iUniverse

  8 Copy quote

• The thought that we are enduring the unendurable is one of the things that keeps us going.

  Molly Haskell

  Adversity, Unendurable, Haskell

  Molly Haskell (2000). “Love and Other Infectious Diseases: A Memoir”, p.96, iUniverse

  9 Copy quote

• For a woman there is nothing more erotic than being understood.

  Molly Haskell

  Erotic, Haskell, Understood

  8 Copy quote

• The Internet is democracy's revenge on democracy.

  Molly Haskell

  Revenge, Democracy, Internet

  8 Copy quote

• I would trade many an art-film classic for the final exchange between Redford and Streisand in front of the Plaza.

  Molly Haskell

  Art, Finals, Classic

  4 Copy quote

• The mammary fixation is the most American of the sex fetishes.

  Molly Haskell

  Sex, Haskell, Fixation

  Molly Haskell (2016). “From Reverence to Rape: The Treatment of Women in the Movies, Third Edition”, p.105, University of Chicago Press

  67 Copy quote

• ...(Charles) Reich discredits reason because it has been used to justify the war in Vietnam, which is like deciding that because your mother has cooked you a few bad meals you must never eat again.

  Molly Haskell

  Mother, War, Meals

  5 Copy quote

• Movies both reflect and create social conditions, but their special charm is to offer fantasy clothes as virtual reality, a world where people consume without the tedium of labor. Characters float in a world where the bill never comes due ... and we wonder why we're a debtor nation!

  Molly Haskell

  Movie, Character, Reality

  5 Copy quote

• Madness is always fascinating, for it reveals the ungluing we all secretly fear: the mind taking off from the body, the possibility that the magnet that attaches us to a context in the world can lose its grip.

  Molly Haskell

  Insanity, Mind, World

  Molly Haskell (2000). “Love and Other Infectious Diseases: A Memoir”, p.84, iUniverse

  4 Copy quote

• One of the attributes of love . . . is to bring harmony and order out of chaos.

  Molly Haskell

  Love Is, Order, Chaos

  Molly Haskell (2016). “From Reverence to Rape: The Treatment of Women in the Movies, Third Edition”, p.27, University of Chicago Press

  6 Copy quote

• American eroticism has always been of a different provenance and complexion than the European variety, an enjoyment both furtive and bland that is closer to a blushing cartoon than a sensual celebration.

  Molly Haskell

  Sensual, Cartoon, Different

  Molly Haskell (2016). “From Reverence to Rape: The Treatment of Women in the Movies, Third Edition”, p.21, University of Chicago Press

  4 Copy quote

• [On swingers:] They have gone from Puritanism into promiscuity without passing through sensuality.

  Molly Haskell

  Sex, Gone, Passing

  7 Copy quote

• Hospitals, like airports and supermarkets, only pretend to be open nights and weekends.

  Molly Haskell

  Weekend, Night, Airports

  Molly Haskell (2000). “Love and Other Infectious Diseases: A Memoir”, p.34, iUniverse

  8 Copy quote

You May Also Like:

Andrew Sarris

Jeanine Basinger

Laura Mulvey

Phillip Lopate

Pauline Kael

Robert Osborne

Manny Farber

Teresa de Lauretis