A Quote by Kate Zambreno

On the whole, most biographies about literary women tend to diagnose them. — © Kate Zambreno
On the whole, most biographies about literary women tend to diagnose them.
I read so ravenously that I would read through whole categories. I was crazy about reading biographies. [...] I think biographies are very urgent to children.
I have observed that male writers tend to get asked what they think and women what they feel," she says. "In my experience, and that of a lot of other women writers, all of the questions coming at them from interviewers tend to be about how lucky they are to be where they are – about luck and identity and how the idea struck them. The interviews much more seldom engage with the woman as a serious thinker, a philosopher, as a person with preoccupations that are going to sustain them for their lifetime.
I know there are certain men that hate women or don't like women, and in order to make women feel small, they tend to isolate them when they bully them. And women are often humiliated by it and feel they can't do anything about it. So my advice to women would be: there's always support around for those sorts of things and if you feel you're isolated in any way, or being bullied, you must talk to someone about it.
Great geniuses have the shortest biographies. Their cousins can tell you nothing about them. They lived in their writings, and sotheir house and street life was trivial and commonplace. If you would know their tastes and complexions, the most admiring of their readers most resembles them.
I grew up reading biographies on groups, and I love all that. The thing about biographies, it's the old cliché but it's true - a lot of the time these things are more about the author than they are about the group.
As for history, we are living in its ruins. And as for biographies, we are living with the consequences of all the decisions ever made in them. I tend not to read them for pleasure. It’s not unlike carefully scrutinizing the map when one has already reached the destination.
I'm feminist in that I believe that there should be equality between men and women. I get deeply frustrated on a daily basis by the enormous gender divide in the U.S. literary world. But I don't know how to deal with it, so I don't tend to say much about it.
One of the realities for women writers is that sometimes you'll start strong, but as you see people go up the ladder, working in their literary lives, getting prizes and awards and the better teaching gigs, women tend to sort of drop away.
it never really occurred to her that literary men, if they like women at all, do not want literary women but girls.
You hear about people your whole life, 'So-and-so has cancer,' and you're like, 'Wow, that's too bad,' and then most people tend to go about their day. But when someone tells you that it's your father or it's your family, that doesn't tend to go away.
Women inspire me... so I enjoy women's stories and biographies. I am interested in all women.
Most men love women. Most men are intrigued and bedeviled by them. Most men spend their lives dreaming about women. It's the most natural, normal thing in the world to do, but here comes the left and the Democrat Party trying to politicize even male-female relationships by inculcating into them things like feminism, proper political behavior.
It turns out that a lot of women just have a problem with women in power. You know, this whole sisterhood, this whole let's go march for women's rights and, you know, just constantly talking about what women look like or what they wear, or making fun of their choices or presuming that they're not as powerful as the men around. This presumptive negativity about women in power I think is very unfortunate, because let's just try to access that and have a conversation about it, rather than a confrontation about it.
I've always loved independent women, outspoken women, eccentric women, funny women, flawed women. When someone says about a woman, 'I'm sorry, that's just wrong,' I tend to think she must be doing something right.
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.
Reporters tend to find in others what they are suited to find, so there is a whole school of reporting where they are cynical about the world, and everything reinforces that. Whereas I tend to be optimistic and be amused by people and like them, even rather bad people.
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