I forgot the songs they sung – and most of those songs are now dead; I erased their dialect from my tongue.
AGNES SMEDLEYI forgot the songs they sung – and most of those songs are now dead; I erased their dialect from my tongue.
AGNES SMEDLEYProfessors could silence me then; they had figures, diagrams, maps, books.
AGNES SMEDLEYI shot, rode, jumped, and took part in all the fights of the boys.
AGNES SMEDLEYBut here in New York I was ignorant, insignificant, unimportant–one in millions whose destiny concerned no one. New York did not even know of my existence. Nor did it care.
AGNES SMEDLEYThousands of women are crushed and made inarticulate by that system and never develop as their natures would force them to develop were they in a decent environment.
AGNES SMEDLEYMuch that we read of Russia is imagination and desire only.
AGNES SMEDLEYI feel like a person living on the brink of a volcano crater.
AGNES SMEDLEYI would not let it ruin me as it ruined others! I would speak only with money, hard money.
AGNES SMEDLEYBut settled things were enemies to me and soon lost their newness and color. The unknown called.
AGNES SMEDLEYNew York was a new and strange world. Vast, impersonal, merciless.
AGNES SMEDLEYYet it is awful to love a person who is a torture to you. And a fascinating person who loves you and won’t hear of anything but your loving him and living right by his side through all eternity!
AGNES SMEDLEYBut there were years when, in search of what I thought was better, nobler things I denied these, my people, and my family.
AGNES SMEDLEYFor the first week of the Sian events I was a first aid worker in the streets of Sian.
AGNES SMEDLEYI have loved and bitterness left me for that hour. But there are times when love itself is bitter.
AGNES SMEDLEYWhen I was a girl, the West was still young, and the law of force, of physical force, was dominant.
AGNES SMEDLEYI was learning that books and diagrams can be evil things if they deaden the mind of man and make him blind or cynical before subjection of any kind.
AGNES SMEDLEY