150
" I wished that that woman would write and proclaim this unique empire so that other women, other unacknowledged sovereigns, might exclaim: I, too, overflow; my desires have invented new desires, my body knows unheard-of songs. Time and again I, too, have felt so full of luminous torrents that I could burst-burst with forms much more beautiful than those which are put up in frames and sold for a stinking fortune. And I, too, said nothing, showed nothing; I didn't open my
mouth, I didn't repaint my half of the world. I was ashamed. I was afraid, and I swallowed my shame and my fear. I said to myself: You are
mad! "
― Hélène Cixous , The Laugh of the Medusa
153
" I write, I extend my hand; without my knowing it, this is already a prayer, I extend my hand to you so that you will exist because you do exist, beyond my fingers, your fingers, without my knowing it this is already a response, already I draw to my side the site for you, with one hand I call the other hand, it is in this modest, all-powerful way that I begin to save what is lost. When I write I ask for your hand. "
― Hélène Cixous , Stigmata: Escaping Texts
154
" Here I am now. And it is hell. Paradise? Yes, I still am here, but who? only myself, with my small waist, my small soul, my small arms, my small intelligence pushed to its greatest heights and thus ruthlessly able to see itself shut up inside its supple transparent but oh ruthlessly inflexible membrane, if I push it any farther it will burst its envelope, I am going to lose part of my mind, we will not longer steer clear of madness. "
― Hélène Cixous , The Book of Promethea
155
" As a militant, she is an integral part of all liberations. She must be farsighted, not limited to a blow-by-blow interaction. She foresees that her liberation will do more than modify power relations or toss the ball over to the other camp; she will bring about a mutation in
human relations, in thought, in all praxis: hers is not simply a class struggle, which she carries forward into a much vaster movement. Not that in order to be a woman-in-struggle(s) you have to leave the class struggle or repudiate it; but you have to split it open, spread it out, push it forward, fill it with the fundamental struggle so as to prevent the class
struggle, or any other struggle for the liberation of a class or people, from operating as a form of repression, pretext for postponing the inevitable, the staggering alteration in power relations and in the production of individualities "
― Hélène Cixous , The Laugh of the Medusa
159
" Everything takes place in the before-work, a prehistoric season when the characters, smitten with great dead authors, see themselves as books already, as volumes in their dreams, stealing up on the dreamed "Oeuvre," stealthy as wolves, on tiptoe like fools—closing in on the adored Author by Imitation, tracing paper, magic introjection. The copycat "does" Kafka, turns himself into Kafka, from A to Z commits Kafka suicide, right up to the spitting of blood, right up to the deathbed scene. "
― Hélène Cixous , Manhattan: Letters from Prehistory