“Prior to Schneemann, the female body in art was mute and functioned almost exclusively as a mirror of masculine desire.”

“Thus angel embodies neatly the idea that "the muscular body functions as a powerful symbol of desire and lack." Angel is manly but not a man, and his display of masculinity points to the ambivalences that surround gender.”

“If art is not to be life-enhancing, what is it to be? Half the world is feminine--why is there resentment at a female-oriented art? Nobody asks The Tale of Genji to be masculine! Women certainly learn a lot from books oriented toward a masculine world. Why is not the reverse also true? Or are men really so afraid of women's creativity (because they are not themselves at the center of creation, cannot bear children) that a woman writer of genius evokes murderous rage, must be brushed aside with a sneer as 'irrelevant'?”

“I have no desires, save the desire to express myself in defiance of all the world’s muteness.”

“Poetry looking in the mirror sees art, and art looking in a mirror sings poetry.”

“Art is not a mirror. Art is a hammer.”