Praxis Quotes

“PRAXIS DUVEEN, AT THE age of five, sitting on the beach at Brighton, made a pretty picture for the photographer. Round angel face, yellow curls, puffed sleeves, white socks and little white shoes—one on, one off, while she tried to take a pebble from between her tiny pink toes—delightful! The photographer had hoped to include her elder sister Hypatia in the picture, but that sullen, sallow little girl had refused to appear on the same piece of card as her ill-shod sister.”
― Fay Weldon, Praxis: A Novel

“Of course men can’t know you when you’re unclean,’ said Hilda. ‘It says so in the Bible. That’s why it’s called the curse. It’s God’s punishment.’

‘For what?’

‘Giving Adam the apple, I suppose.’

‘He didn’t have to eat it.’

‘Yes he did. If someone offers you food, it’s only manners to take it. Why are you always so argumentative?”
― Fay Weldon, Praxis

“But as for the rest of you, sisters, when anyone says to you, this, that or the other is natural, then fight. Nature does not know best; for the birds, for the bees, for the cows; for men, perhaps. But your interests and Nature’s do not coincide. Nature our Friend is an argument used, quite understandably, by men.”
― Fay Weldon, Praxis

“Little doll voice, piping gently in the wilds!”
― Fay Weldon, Praxis: A Novel

“A brave little woman,’ said the vicar. ‘So many of our women are now left alone.’ And so they were. Those who in peacetime were expected to need male protection, in wartime were assumed to be able to manage perfectly well. And so they did.”
― Fay Weldon, Praxis