Quotes from Alicia Suskin Ostriker

The normal world tries to stifle emotion with the noose of its own deadness.

and my friend Karen remembers as a little girl studying Hebrew she inquired of her refugee tutor who stroked his beard and said in Yiddish "if there is a god or if there isn't a god a Jew studies"--isn't that a good story beloved, but the woman in me says that the poet lies the poet can afford to lie

Somewhere under the hurricane a sea turtle rows through silence.

At a certain moment, women in cultures that glamorize their images and suffocate their minds, that set them on pedestals while requiring their silence and modesty, cease to be either silent or modest.

Now comes the good part. Breathing the happy gas, I get answers to all the questions I had about death but was afraid to ask.