9 Quotes by Isabel Miller

When the Indians saw us whipping our children, they thought at first that we must hate our children, but then they thought, no, no one can hate his child. They decided it must be a religious rite, to make the child hate this world and long for the next. We're a strange vicious people.

I began to wonder if what makes men walk so lordlike and speak so masterfully is having the love of women. If that was it, Sarah and I would make lords of each other.

I looked on up to her eyes and held there steady, thinking pretty soon she’d look away, and then when I knew she wouldn’t the silver thread our eyes were joined by began to hum like far-off bees. I felt my soul melt and flow out along it. I felt my heart melt and drip off my fingertips.

So when I let my head fall back under Sarah’s kiss, the frenzy I trembled at just wasn’t there. Instead, comfort and joy and simplicity and order and answers to questions I’d always supposed unanswerable, such as, why was I born? why a woman? why here? why now?A wonderful glowing spacious peacefulness came to us. There was so much time.

In your eyes I see myself become what I always dreamed I could be.

Let the world either kill us or grow accustomed to us; here we stand.

When the Indians saw us whipping our children, they thought at first that we must hate our children, but then they thought, no, no one can hate his child. They decided it must be a religious rite, to make the child hate this world and long for the next. We’re a strange vicious people.

Who is this cautious unhoping young woman? Where is the hero who bore such batterings for love and stood up before witnesses to ask me to be a hero too? And I am a hero now. Can’t you see? We can be an army of two. We can be Plato’s perfect army: lovers, who will never behave dishonorably in each other’s sight, and invincible. Let the world either kill us or grow accustomed to us; here we stand.

And I felt, I think for the first time, a rage against men. Not because they could say, “I’m going,” and go. Not because they could go to college and become lawyers or preachers while women could only be drudge or ornament but nothing between. Not because they could be parents at no cost to their bodies. But because when they love a woman they may be with her, and all society will protect their possession of her.