Medusa Quotes

“The medieval and Renaissance Christians feared her because she was seen as a sexual being and therefore as a different kind of threat from other monsters. (...) The Romantics pitied her and feminists have celebrated her because she was a victim, even a once beautiful victim. (...) Medusa attracts our attention, in short, not only because of her hideous deformities, but also because as a mortal, as a sexual being and as a victim, she was human: one of us.”
― David A. Leeming, Medusa: In the Mirror of Time

“The moment of decapitation is for Marin, as it had been for Caillois, a moment of 'singular metamorphosis ... when the Gorgon's violence is immobilized in its very expression, imprinting itself on itself'. It is the moment when Medusa is captured 'in the trap of her own deadly gaze', the moment in which she is médusé.”
― David A. Leeming, Medusa: In the Mirror of Time