Witch, scholar, poet, dreamer, and the rest...
Witch, scholar, poet, dreamer, and the rest...
quotes about witches - by women writers.
The season of the witch is finally here, and I couldn't be happier. She is the figure that fascinates me most in literature and media.
Ever since I was little, I've wanted to dress up as a witch on Halloween. Black is the color I never get tired of. The Mists of Avalon is one of my favorite books. Morgana's character is my Roman Empire, and I live for gothic atmospheres.
So I thought I'd dedicate some posts to this theme during November.
Starting with one of my and your favorite formats, namely the collections of quotes by women writers.
Later, there will be a post on book recommendations about witches, which I obviously can't help but do.
Then, certainly a collection of media on the figure of the witch, curious things from the web, paintings, articles, movies, fashion, and so on.
I absolutely adore witches, but vampires captivate me too, so I'm excited to create similar posts dedicated to them!
November is set to be an exciting whirlwind of mystery, intrigue, and suspense!
Without further ado, I hope you will follow along on this journey to experience the season of the witch.
Enjoy!
Witch, scholar, poet, dreamer, and the rest...
― Aurora Leigh by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
The witch is notorious shape-shifter and comes in many guises. More than anything, though, the witch is a shifting and shadowy symbol of female power and a force for subverting the status quo. She is also a vessel that contains our conflicting feelings about female power: our fear of it, our desire for it, our hope that it can and will grow stronger despite the flames that are thrown at it.
― Waking the Witch: Reflections on Women, Magic, and Power by Pam Grossman
I have gone out, a possessed witch,
haunting the black air, braver at night;
dreaming evil, I have done my hitch
over the plain houses, light by light:
lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind.
A woman like that is not a woman, quite.
I have been her kind.
I have found the warm caves in the woods,
filled them with skillets, carvings, shelves,
closets, silks, innumerable goods;
fixed the suppers for the worms and the elves:
whining, rearranging the disaligned.
A woman like that is misunderstood.
I have been her kind.
I have ridden in your cart, driver,
waved my nude arms at villages going by,
learning the last bright routes, survivor
where your flames still bite my thigh
and my ribs crack where your wheels wind.
A woman like that is not ashamed to die.
I have been her kind.― Her Kind from To Bedlam and Part Way Back by Anne Sexton
One doesn’t become a witch to run around being harmful, or to run around being helpful either, a district visitor on a broomstick. It’s to escape all that - to have a life of one’s own, not an existence doled out to by others.
― Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner
When, however, one reads of a witch being ducked, of a woman possessed by devils, of a wise woman selling herbs, or even of a very remarkable man who had a mother, then I think we are on the track of a lost novelist, a suppressed poet, of some mute and inglorious Jane Austen, some Emily Bronte who dashed her brains out on the moor or mopped and mowed about the highways crazed with the torture that her gift had put her to. Indeed, I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.
― A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf
She is neither pink nor pale,
And she will never be all mine;
She learned her hands in a fairy-tale,
And her mouth on a valentine.She has more hair than she needs;
In the sun ‘tis a woe to me!
And her voice is a string of colored beads,
Or steps leading into the sea.She loves me all that she can,
And her ways to my ways resign;
But she was not made for any man,
And she will never be all mine.― Witch-wife by Edna St. Vincent Millay
Nothing could be taken for granted. Women who loved you tried to cut your throat, while women who didn't even know your name scrubbed your back. Witches could sound like Katharine Hepburn and your best friend could try to strangle you. Smack in the middle of an orchid there might be a blob of jello and inside a Mickey Mouse doll, a fixed and radiant star.
― Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
I inhabit the wax image of myself, a doll's body. Sickness begins here; I am a dartboard for witches.
― Sylvia Plath
When I was a child
there was an old woman in our neighborhood whom we called The Witch.
All day she peered from her second story
window
from behind the wrinkled curtains
and sometimes she would open the window
and yell: Get out of my life!
She had hair like kelp
and a voice like a boulder.
I think of her sometimes now
and wonder if I am becoming her.― The Witch's Life by Anne Sexton
That’s why we become witches: to show our scorn of pretending life’s a safe business, to satisfy our passion for adventure. It’s not malice, or wickedness - well, perhaps it is wickedness, for most women love that - but certainly not malice, not wanting to plague cattle and make horrid children spout up pins and - what is it? - “blight the genial bed.”
― Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner
She brought herself away from the disagreeably clinging thought by her usual method - imagining the sweet sharp sensation of being burned alive.
― Hangsaman by Shirley Jackson
Light as feathers the witches fly,
The horn of the moon is plain to see;
By a firefly under a jonquil flower
A goblin toasts a bumble-bee.― excerpt from Camomile Tea by Katherine Mansfield
When I was girl by Nilus stream
I watched the deserts stars arise;
My lover, he who dreamed the Sphinx,
Learned all his dreaming from eyes.
I bore in Greece a burning name,
And I have been in Italy
Madonna to a painter-lad,
And mistress to a Medici.
And have you heard (and I have heard)
Of puzzled men with decorous mien,
Who judged - the wench knew far too much -
And burnt her on the Salem green?― from Verse by Adelaide Crapsey
I, at the edge of the wind. The wuthering heights call to me. I go, witch that I am. And I am transmuted. I am at the edge of my body. And I waste away slowly. What am I saying? I am saying love. And at the edge of love are we.
― That’s Where I’m Going by Clarice Lispector
I often feel I am being burned at the stake just because I have always refused to give up that wonderful strange power I have inside me that becomes manifested when I am in harmonious communication with some other inspired being.
― The Hearing Trumpet by Leonora Carrington
I was hanged for living alone
for having blue eyes and a sunburned skin,
tattered skirts, few buttons,
a weedy farm in my own name,
and a surefire cure for warts;
Oh yes, and breasts,
and a sweet pear hidden in my body.
Whenever there's talk of demons
these come in handy.[…] My throat is taut against the rope
choking off words and air;
I'm reduced to knotted muscle.
Blood bulges in my skull,
my clenched teeth hold it in;
I bite down on despair.[…] When they came to harvest my corpse
(open your mouth, close your eyes)
cut my body from the rope,
surprise, surprise:
I was still alive.Tough luck, folks,
I know the law:
you can’t execute me twice
for the same thing. How nice.― excerpts from Half-Hanged Mary by Margaret Atwood
She herself is a haunted house. She does not possess herself; her ancestors sometimes come and peer out of the windows of her eyes and that is very frightening.
― The Lady of the House of Love by Angela Carter
We were as Hansel and Gretel and we ventured out into the black forest of the world. There were temptations and witches and demons we never dreamed of and there was splendor we only partially imagined.
― Just Kids by Patti Smith
She looked at nobody, but just before she went out, she raised her eyes and took a speedy glance at me. There was something in that looks that startled me - though it was difficult to describe why. There was malice in it, and a curious intimate knowledge. I felt that, without effort, and almost without curiosity, she had known exactly what thoughts were in my mind.
― The Pale Horse by Agatha Christie
One of your precious flowers
dies here almost every day
and you can’t rest until
you attack the cause, meaning
whatever is left, whatever
happens to be sturdier
than your personal passion—It was not meant
to last forever in the real world.
But why admit that, when you can go on
doing what you always do,
mourning and laying blame,
always the two together.I don’t need your praise
to survive. I was here first,
before you were here, before
you ever planted a garden.
And I’ll be here when only the sun and moon
are left, and the sea, and the wide field.I will constitute the field.
― excerpt from Witchgrass by Louise Glück
That was my nature - going from temptation after temptation, not to sin, but to be redeemed.
― The Witching Hour by Anne Rice
Witchcraft was hung, in History,
But History and I
Find all the Witchcraft that we need
Around us, every Day—― Witchcraft was hung, in History by Emily Dickinson
I hope you enjoyed this collection of quotes about witches.
Wishing you a wonderful rest of the week,
Nicole.