I have always detested the belief that sex is the chief bond between man and woman.
AGNES SMEDLEYNow, being a girl, I was ashamed of my body and my lack of strength. So I tried to be a man.
More Agnes Smedley Quotes
-
-
I have no objection to a man being a man, however masculine that may be.
AGNES SMEDLEY -
I was ashamed of them and their ways of life. But now – yes, I love them; they are a part of my blood; they, with all their virtues and their faults, played a great part in forming my way of looking at life.
AGNES SMEDLEY -
I shot, rode, jumped, and took part in all the fights of the boys.
AGNES SMEDLEY -
The subjects treated were technical Marxist theories.
AGNES SMEDLEY -
I would not let it ruin me as it ruined others! I would speak only with money, hard money.
AGNES SMEDLEY -
But there were years when, in search of what I thought was better, nobler things I denied these, my people, and my family.
AGNES SMEDLEY -
No one yet knows what a man’s province is, and how far that province, as conceived of today, is artificial.
AGNES SMEDLEY -
Subjection of any kind and in any place is beneath the dignity of man.
AGNES SMEDLEY -
I feel like a person living on the brink of a volcano crater.
AGNES SMEDLEY -
New York was a new and strange world. Vast, impersonal, merciless.
AGNES SMEDLEY -
Yet 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 SMEDLEY -
Now, being a girl, I was ashamed of my body and my lack of strength. So I tried to be a man.
AGNES SMEDLEY -
My mother listened to all the news from the camp during the strike.
AGNES SMEDLEY -
Everybody calls everybody a spy, secretly, in Russia, and everybody is under surveillance. You never feel safe.
AGNES SMEDLEY -
But 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 SMEDLEY






