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We all grow up with the weight of history on us. Our ancestors dwell in the attics of our brains as they do in the spiraling chains of knowledge hidden in every cell of our bodies.

— Shirley Abbott Womenfolks: Growing Up Down South (1984)

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More quotes by Shirley Abbott

All fiction may be autobiography, but all autobiography is of course fiction.

People just showed up and were always made welcome. To stay less than an hour was an insult, and there was always a meal.

Womenfolks: Growing Up Down South (1984)

Within our family there was no such thing as a person who did not matter. Second cousins thrice removed mattered.

Womenfolks: Growing Up Down South (1984)

If I grew up in the simple-minded belief that women were as strong and intelligent as men, it was because I came from a society that had once believed it.

Womenfolks: Growing Up Down South (1984)

The frontier will nevertheless survive in the attitudes a few of us inherited from it. One of those attitudes—to me a beatitude—is the conviction that the past matters, that history weighs on us and refuses to be forgotten by us, and that the worst poverty women—or men—can suffer is to be bereft of their past.

Womenfolks: Growing Up Down South (1984)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Shirley Abbott (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.