Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Author

1945-01-27

Clarissa Pinkola Estes is an American author, Jungian psychoanalyst, and storyteller. She is best known for Women Who Run with the Wolves.

Books by Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Women who run with the wolves
View on Amazon

As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.

Quotes by Clarissa Pinkola Estes

A woman must be able to stand in the face of power, because ultimately some part of that power will become hers.
Read quote
Women's curiosity was given a negative connotation, whereas men were called investigative. Women were called nosy, whereas men were called inquiring. In reality, the trivialization of women's curiosity so that it seems like nothing more than irksome snooping denies women's insight, hunches, and intuitions. It denies all her senses. It attempts to attack her fundamental power.
Read quote
There's a reason poets often say, 'Poetry saved my life,' for often the blank page is the only one listening to the soul's suffering, the only one registering the story completely, the only one receiving all softly and without condemnation.
Read quote
Our own sorrows seem heavy enough, even when lifted by certain long-term joys. But watching others hurt is the breaker of most any heart.
Read quote
Modern storytellers are the descendants of an immense and ancient community of holy people, troubadours, bards, griots, cantadoras, cantors, traveling poets, bums, hags, and crazy people.
Read quote
This kind of forgetting does not erase memory, it lays the emotion surrounding the memory to rest.
Read quote
To Than Shwe, a kingdom in return for the eternal soul is just the right egregious trade-off. Than Shwe is a general who carries the light of unbounded ambition.
Read quote
Asking the proper questions is the central action of transformation. Questions are the key that causes the secret doors of the psyche to swing open.
Read quote
The drive toward Life is protective, thoughtful, vulnerable, and invested in immaculate love. It is this last that marks the difference between a wise heart muddy with real life experiences in the trenches and a dry heart that functions on rote concepts alone.
Read quote
If women were in charge of everything, there would be women tyrants. If black people were in charge, there would be black tyrants. If Hispanics were in charge, then Hispanic tyrants.
Read quote
When women reassert their relationship with the wildish nature, they are gifted with a permanent and internal watcher, a knower, a visionary, an oracle, an inspiratrice, an intuitive, a maker, a creator, an inventor, and a listener who guide, suggest, and urge vibrant life in the inner and outer world.
Read quote
I hope you will go out and let stories happen to you, and that you will work them, water them with your blood and tears and you laughter till they bloom, till you yourself burst into bloom.
Read quote
Wolves and women are relational by nature, inquiring, possessed of great endurance and strength. They are deeply intuitive, intensely concerned with their young, their mate and their pack. Yet both have been hounded, harassed and falsely imputed to be devouring and devious, overly aggressive, of less value than those who are their detractors.
Read quote
I became married at a young age and had two daughters and divorced at 26. I had to go on welfare to make ends meet. I had no way to support myself.
Read quote