Kathy Acker Quotes

Quotes about:

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  Photo © Michel Delsol

  Women need to become literary "criminals," break the literary laws and reinvent their own, because the established laws prevent women from presenting the reality of their lives.

  Kathy Acker

  Women, Writing, Reality

  "Bodies of Work". Book by Kathy Acker, 1996.

  59 Copy quote

• The only reaction against an unbearable society is equally unbearable nonsense.

  Kathy Acker

  Unbearable, Nonsense, Reactions

  Kathy Acker (1997). “Bodies of Work: Essays”, Serpents Tail

  6 Copy quote

• GET RID OF MEANING. YOUR MIND IS A NIGHTMARE THAT HAS BEEN EATING YOU: NOW EAT YOUR MIND.

  Kathy Acker

  Mind, Nightmare, Eating

  Kathy Acker, Dennis Cooper (2002). “Essential Acker: The Selected Writings of Kathy Acker”, p.265, Grove Press

  22 Copy quote

• If you ask me what I want, I'll tell you. I want everything.

  Kathy Acker

  Want, Lobotomy, Ask Me

  Kathy Acker (1996). “Pussy, King of the Pirates”, Acker, Kathy

  22 Copy quote

• Pain is the world. I don't have anywhere to run.

  Kathy Acker

  Running, Pain, World

  Kathy Acker (1989). “Blood and Guts in High School”, p.125, Grove Press

  13 Copy quote

• i am a limitless series of natural disasters and all of these disasters have been unnaturally repressed.

  Kathy Acker

  Limitless, Natural, Disaster

  Kathy Acker (1996). “Pussy, king of the pirates”

  4 Copy quote

• There must be a secret hidden in this book or else you wouldn't bother to read it

  Kathy Acker

  Book, Secret, Bother

  Kathy Acker (1997). “Bodies of Work: Essays”, Serpents Tail

  8 Copy quote

• Even a woman who has the soul of a pirate, at least pirate morals, even a woman who prefer loneliness to the bickerings and constraints of heterosexual marriage, even such a woman who is a freak in our society needs a home... The only characteristic freaks share is our knowledge that we don't fit in.

  Kathy Acker

  Home, Pirate, Soul

  "Don Quixote: A Novel". Book by Kathy Acker, 1986.

  24 Copy quote

• Everytime you read, you are walking among the dead, and, if you are listening, you just might hear prophecies.

  Kathy Acker

  Listening, Might, Prophecy

  Kathy Acker (1997). “Bodies of Work: Essays”, Serpents Tail

  4 Copy quote

• The whole world is men's bloody fantasies.

  Kathy Acker

  Fear, Men, Atheism

  Kathy Acker (1989). “Empire of the Senseless”, p.210, Grove Press

  13 Copy quote

• We don't have a clue what it is to be male or female, or if there are intermediate genders. Male and female might be fields which overlap into androgyny or different kinds of sexual desires. But because we live in a Western, patriarchal world, we have very little chance of exploring these gender possibilities.

  Kathy Acker

  Desire, Males, Female

  "Eve Experts". Real World Multimedia, realworldmultimedia.com, 2004.

  61 Copy quote

• There are times when the law jeopardizes those who obey it.

  Kathy Acker

  Law, Anarchy, Jeopardize

  Kathy Acker (1996). “Pussy, King of the Pirates”, Acker, Kathy

  22 Copy quote

• I'm no longer a child and I still want to be, to live with the pirates. Because I want to live forever in wonder. The difference between me as a child and me as an adult is this and only this: when I was a child, I longed to travel into, to live in wonder. Now, I know, as much as I can know anything, that to travel into wonder is to be wonder. So it matters little whether I travel by plane, by rowboat, or by book. Or, by dream. I do not see, for there is no I to see. That is what the pirates know. There is only seeing and, in order to go to see, one must be a pirate.

  Kathy Acker

  Dream, Children, Book

  9 Copy quote

• Well, I think writing is basically about time and rhythm. Like with jazz. You have your basic melody and then you just riff off of it. And the riffs are about timing.

  Kathy Acker

  Writing, Thinking, Jazz

  21 Copy quote

• Dreams are manifestations of identities.

  Kathy Acker

  Dream, Identity, Manifestation

  Kathy Acker (1996). “Pussy, King of the Pirates”, Acker, Kathy

  5 Copy quote

• All memory can do is scream for touch.

  Kathy Acker

  Memories, Scream, Can Do

  9 Copy quote

• One of the most destructive forces in the world is love. For the following reason: The world is a conglomeration of objects, no, of events and the approachings of events towards objects, therefore of becoming stases static stagnant, of all that is unreal. You get in the world, you get your daily life your routine doesn’t matter if you’re rich poor legal illegal, you begin to believe what doesn’t change is real, and love comes along and shows all these unchangeable for ever fixtures to be flimsy paper bits. Love can tear anything to shreds.

  Kathy Acker

  Real, Believe, Tears

  8 Copy quote

• It's all up to you, girls. You have to be strong. These are the days of post-women's liberation. You have grown up by now and you have to take care of yourself. No one's going to help you.

  Kathy Acker

  Girl, Strong, Up To You

  Kathy Acker (2017). “Blood and Guts in High School”, p.40, Penguin UK

  6 Copy quote

• But : We're still human. Human because we keep on battling against all these horrors, the horrors caused and not caused by us. We battle not in order to stay alive, that would be too materalistic, for we are body and spirit, but in order to love each other.

  Kathy Acker

  Order, Battle, Alive

  Kathy Acker (1989). “Empire of the Senseless”, p.69, Grove Press

  18 Copy quote

• You create identity, you're not given identity per se. What became more and more interesting to me wasn't the I, it was text because it's text that create identity. That's how I got interested in plagiarism.

  Kathy Acker

  Interesting, Identity, Plagiarism

  Kathy Acker (1991). “Hannibal Lecter, my father”, Semiotext

  8 Copy quote

• A novel is a book with a lot of pages.

  Kathy Acker

  Book, Pages, Novel

  16 Copy quote

• I find waiting unbearable because it makes me passive and negates me. I hate being nothing.

  Kathy Acker

  Hate, Waiting, Unbearable

  Kathy Acker (1991). “Hannibal Lecter, my father”, Semiotext

  10 Copy quote

• Literature is that which denounces and slashes apart the repressing machine at the level of the signified.

  Kathy Acker

  Machines, Literature, Levels

  Kathy Acker (1989). “Empire of the Senseless”, p.12, Grove Press

  7 Copy quote

• Well, fear and homophobia are both pervasive.

  Kathy Acker

  Wells, Homophobia

  4 Copy quote

• Perhaps if human desire is said out loud, the urban planes, the prisons, the architectural mirrors will take off, as airplanes do. The black planes will take off into the night air and the night winds, sliding past and behind each other, zooming, turning and turning in the redness of the winds, living, never to return.

  Kathy Acker

  Airplane, Past, Night

  Kathy Acker (1989). “Empire of the Senseless”, p.112, Grove Press

  19 Copy quote

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