Donna Woolfolk Cross
Donna Woolfolk Cross graduated cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, from the University of Pennsylvania in 1969 with a B.A. in English. She moved to London, England, after graduation, and worked as an editorial assistant for a small publishing house on Fleet Street, W.H. Allen and Company. Upon her return to the United States, Cross worked at Young and Rubicam, a Madison Avenue advertising firm, before going on to graduate school at UCLA where she earned a master's degree in Literature and Writing in 1972.
In 1973, Cross moved with her husband to upstate New York where she began teaching writing in a college English Department. Now writing is her fulltime career.
She is the author of two books on language, Word Abuse: How the Words We Use Use Us and Mediaspeak: How Television Makes Up Your Mind. She is the coauthor of Speaking of Words and Daddy's Little Girl. The product of seven years of research and writing, Pope Joan is her first novel. She is now at work on a new novel set in 17th century France.
“It was a child's awareness, never spoken or even fully acknowledged, but deeply felt.”
“Why the woman is better...though she was created second she was made from Adam's side whole Adam was made from common clay. Woman should be preferred to man because Eve was created inside Paradise, but Adam was created outside. As for will, woman should be considered superior to man-for Eve ate of the apple for the love of knowledge and learning, but Adam ate of it merely because she asked him.”
“Truly Virgil was right: love was a form of sickness. It altered people, made them behave in strange and irrational ways.”
“There was always a way, when one knew what one wanted.”
“But she had known, better than anyone else, what demons he had faced, had known how hard he had fought to free himself from them. That he had lost the fight in the end made the struggle no less honorable.”
“Heed my words, daughter, if you ever mean to be happy: Never give yourself to a man.”
“She did not care about anything very much. Hope was gone. She existed that was all.”
“Why, she wondered, do we always reserve our worst hatred for our own?”
“What is life? The joy of the blessed, the sorrow of the sad, and a search for death. And what is death? An inevitable happening, an uncertain pilgrimage, the tears of the living, the thief of man.”
“The bud of a rose grows in darkness. It knows nothing of the sun, yet it pushes at the darkness that confines it until at last the walls give way and the rose bursts forth, spreading its petals into the light. I love him.”
“Who was to know what went on in a person's heart? A wise woman kept her own counsel.”
“She had discovered that her love of knowing was not unnatural or sinful but the direct consequence of a God-given ability to reason.”
“...for Eve ate of the apple for love of knowledge and learning, but Adam ate of it merely because she asked him.”
“Shattered by the cumulative effect of so much horror and death, Joan was again afflicted by a crisis of faith. How could a good and benevolent God let such a thing happen? How could He so terribly afflict even children and babies, who were not guilty of any sin?”
“Strange the workings of the heart. One could go on for years, habituated to loss, reconciled to it, and then, in a moments unwary thought, the pain resurfaced, sharp and raw as a fresh wound.”
“As for will, woman should be considered superior to man for Eve ate of the apple for love of knowledge and learning, but Adam ate of it merely because she asked him.”
“Thunder sounded, very near, and the child woke.”