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Top Michelle Cliff Quotes

Browse top 6 most favorite famous quotes and sayings by Michelle Cliff.

Favorite Michelle Cliff Quotes

1. "One of the effects of indoctrination, of passing into the anglo-centrism of British West Indian culture, is that you believe absolutely in the hegemony of the King's English and in the proper forms of expression. Or else your writing is not literature; it is folklore, or worse. And folklore can never be art. Read some poetry by West Indian writers--some, not all--and you will see what I mean. The reader has to dissect anglican stanza after anglican stanza for Caribbean truth, and may never find it. The anglican ideal -- Milton, Wordsworth, Keats -- was held before us with an assurance that we were unable, and would never be able, to achieve such excellence. We crouched outside the cave." ~ Michelle Cliff
2. "It was never a question of passing. It was a question of hiding. Behind Black and white perceptions of who we were -- who they thought we were. Tropics. Plantations. Calypso. Cricket. We were the people with the musical voices and the coronation mugs on our parlor tables. I would be whatever figurine these foreign imaginations cared for me to be. It would be so simple to let others fill in for me. So easy to startle them with a flash of anger when their visions got out of hand -- but never to sustain the anger for myself. It would be a life lived within myself. A life cut off. I know who I am but you will never know who I am. I may in fact lose touch with who I am." ~ Michelle Cliff
3. "To cope with hurt and control my fears, I grew a thick skin. Oh, the many names of power - pride, arrogance, control. I am not the frozen snow queen but a flesh and blood woman with perhaps too loving a heart, one easily hurt." ~ Michelle Cliff
4. "A theory in the flesh means one where the physical realities of our lives- our skin color, the land or concrete we grew up on, our sexual longings- all fuse to create a politic born out of necessity. Here, we attempt to bridge the contradictions in our experience: We are the colored in a white feminist movement. We are the feminists among the people of our culture. We are often the lesbians among the straight. We do this bridging by naming our selves and by telling our stories in our own words." ~ Michelle Cliff
5. "In America: each year the day before school after summer vacation I sat on my bed touching my notebooks, pencils, ruler-holding the stern and sweet smelling brown oxfords in my lap and spreading my skirt and blouse and underwear and socks before me. My mother would come in and always say the same thing: "Free paper burn now." Such words conspire to make a past. Such words conjure a knowledge. Such words make assimilation impossible. They stay with you for years. They puzzle but you sense a significance. I need these words." ~ Michelle Cliff
6. "Who can say how many lives have been saved by books?" ~ Michelle Cliff

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In the early centuries of Islam, the great schools of Islamic jurisprudence were built upon the above principles. Basic to all their legal systems they developed the doctrine that liberty is the fundamental basis of law."
Author: Aly Khan

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