“Literature is that which denounces and slashes apart the repressing machine at the level of the signified.”

Happy birthday, Kathy Acker! Here are some quotes from her writing.

“At a certain point I realized that the ‘I’ doesn’t exist. So I said to myself: If the ‘I’ doesn’t exist, I have to construct one, or maybe even more than one.”

“The only characteristic freaks share is our knowledge that we don’t fit in. Anywhere. It is for you, freaks my loves, I am writing and it is about you.”

“Well, a comma’s a breath, and a sentence is a thought, and a paragraph is an emotion…You’re always working the paragraph against the sentence.”

“Writing must break through the representational or fictional mirror and be equal in force to the horror experienced in daily life.”

“Writing for me is about my freedom. When I was a kid, my parents were like monsters to me, and the world extended from them. They were horrible. And I was this good little girl—I didn’t have the guts to oppose them. They told me what to do and how to be. So the only time I could have any freedom or joy was when I was alone in my room. Writing is what I did when I was alone with no one watching me or telling me what to do. I could do whatever I wanted. So writing was really associated with body pleasure—it was the same thing. It was like the only thing I had.”

“For me, writing is freedom. Therein lies (my) identity.”

“Moreover, the excitement of writing, for me, is that of a journey into strangeness: to write down what one thinks one knows is to destroy possibilities for joy.”

“The more that I write my own novels, the more it seems to me that to write is to read.”

“It’s all up to you, girls. You have to be strong. These are the days of post-women’s liberation. You have grown up by now and you have to take care of yourself. No one’s going to help you.”

“Every book, remember, is dead until a reader activates it by reading. Every time that you read you are walking among the dead, and, if you are listening, you just might hear prophecies. Aeneas did. Odysseus did.”

“Literature is that which denounces and slashes apart the repressing machine at the level of the signified.”

“IF THERE IS A GOD, GOD IS DISJUNCTION AND MADNESS.”

“Love goes away when your mind goes away and then you’re someone else.”

“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.”

“I affirm that every day is a day of wonder. I affirm that though I don’t see it, I have more money than I need, I earn more than I need, I live in a house w/ room for all my books next to where I can walk in the woods, I am healthy I love my work, my money & my books are in the hands of the right people & I have time for my work, every day I open more & more to vision.”