45 Quotes by Jane Rule

And the world must always seem to be either the Garden of Eden, from which he is about to be expelled, or a circle in hell, into which he has wandered like Dante or Orpheus only to find that he can’t get out.

She was learning to treat laws as most people treat poems, making them mean whatever she wanted them to without reference to the author’s intention or achievement.

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.

Human beings tolerate what they understand they have to tolerate.

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

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

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.

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.

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.