Caitlin Moran Quotes & Sayings

I will NOT be reading when we fly. My face is pressed against the window. When we fly, I am going to be absolutely present for every meter and every cloud. No one will EVER have flown more than me. — Caitlin Moran

One is not born a woman - one becomes one," she didn't know the half of it. — Caitlin Moran

And you will be quite on your own when you do all this. There is no academy where you can learn to be yourself; there is no line manager slowly urging you toward the correct answer. You are midwife to yourself, and will give birth to yourself, over and over, in dark rooms, alone. — Caitlin Moran

Twitter means all my friends are in my computer. All my ideas are in my computer. I can do whatever I want in there; I'm kind of ... bionic. — Caitlin Moran

I don't understand, then, why, in the midst of all this, pregnant women - women trying to make rational decisions about their futures and, usually, that of their families, too - should be subject to more pressure about preserving life than, say, Vladimir Putin, the World Bank, or the Catholic Church. — Caitlin Moran

Never feel this bad again. Never come back to this place, where only a knife will do. Live a gentle and kind life. Don't do things that make you want to hurt yourself. Whatever you do, every day, remember this - then steer away from here. — Caitlin Moran

A reformed bitch is going to cost a fortune in stamps. — Caitlin Moran

Your hard-won triumphs can be wholly negated if you live in a climate where your victories are seen as threatening, incorrect, distasteful, or
most crucially of all, for a teenage girl
simply uncool. Few girls would choose to be right
right, down into their clever, brilliant bones
but lonely. — Caitlin Moran

I can't live in a world where there are only, like, four kinds of women. Or where every woman is obsessed with cake. The very least I ask is that we have one female character in the world who likes savory things! I don't have any role models who like cheese! — Caitlin Moran

Politics will always mean more to the poor. Always. That's why we strike and march, and despair when our young say they won't vote. That's why the poor are seen as more vital, and animalistic. No classical music for us - no walking around National Trust properties or buying reclaimed flooring. We don't have nostalgia. We don't do yesterday. We can't bear it. We don't want to be reminded of our past, because it was awful: dying in mines and slums without literacy or the vote. Without dignity. It was all so desperate then. That's why the present and the future is for the poor - that's the place in time for us: surviving now, hoping for better later. We live now - for our own instant hot, fast treats, to pep us up: sugar, a cigarette, a new fast song on the radio. — Caitlin Moran

In the 20th century- an age in thrall to the new- women turn out to be the newest thing of all; still packed up in cellophane, still folded up in the box, having played dead for the length of history. But now we are the new species!We are the tulip- America- the Hula Hoop- the moon shot- cocaine! Everything we do is going to be, implicitly,amazing. — Caitlin Moran

... she is in the girl Matrix trying to catch invisible slow mo bullets those of us outside the Matrix can't see. You can always tell when a woman is with the wrong man because she has so much to say about the fact that nothing is happening. When a woman finds the right person, on the other hand, they just disappear for six months and then they resurface, eyes shiny and usually about six pounds heavier. — Caitlin Moran

What do you do when you build yourself - only to realize you built yourself with the wrong things? You rip it up and start again. That is the work of your teenage years - to build up and tear down and build up again, over and over, endlessly, like speeded-up film of cities during boom times and wars. To be fearless, and endless, in your reinventions - to keep twisting on nineteen, going bust, and dealing in again, and again. Invent, invent, invent. — Caitlin Moran

Because what you are, as a teenager, is a small, silver, empty rocket. And you use loud music as fuel, and then the information in books as maps and coordinates, to tell you where you're going. — Caitlin Moran

When Simone de Beauvoir said, "One is not born a woman - one becomes one," she didn't know the half of it. In — Caitlin Moran

If you're not a confident person, pretend to be one. — Caitlin Moran

Kite spends three minutes trying to calm me down - 'Dutch! Dutch!' - and then just hugs me with his huge arms, so I am completely wrapped up, and inside him, like an owl inside a hollow tree. This is my most enjoyable crying ever - if all crying were this pleasant, I would do it more often. — Caitlin Moran

I'm learning a whole new thing: that sometimes, love isn't observable or noisy or tangible. That sometimes, love is anonymous. Sometimes, love is silent. Sometimes, love just stands there when you're calling it a cunt, biting its tongue and waiting. — Caitlin Moran

I don't want to sacrifice myself for something. I don't want do DIE for something. I don't even want to walk in the rain up a hill in a skirt that's sticking to my thighs for something. I want to live for something instead- as men do. I want to have fun. The most fun ever. I want to start partying like it's 1999, nine years early. I want a rapturous quest, I want to sacrifice myself to glee, I want to make the world better in some way. — Caitlin Moran

Heaven. The biggest waste of our time we ever invented, outside jigsaws. — Caitlin Moran

As far as I'm concerned, you're a feminist by default if you're born in the Western world right now. — Caitlin Moran

Man, I was on the shepherd's pie last night like you wouldn't believe. I had, like, MASH in my EYEBROWS by 10pm. I was on a total mince rush! — Caitlin Moran

For me, and I suspect a lot of socially awkward people, dealing with people face-to-face seems really traumatic. Particularly if you have massive sweating issues, and particularly if on top of that you have quite smelly sweat that smells like onion soup. — Caitlin Moran

Of course, in the end, when Mapplethorpe turned out to be very gay, Smith was left with no other option than to go off and write Horses and grow the world's most influential lady mustache instead. Her hand was forced into productivity. — Caitlin Moran

Perhaps it's time for women to finally stop being secretive about their vices and start treating them like all other addicts treat their habits instead. — Caitlin Moran

You've never potty-trained a toddler, have you, Johanna? It's like working as a ball boy at Wimbledon, but with shit. And it goes on for months. With people crying at you. — Caitlin Moran

The reason they don't ask me when they're having kids, of course, is because men can, pretty much, carry on a normal life once they've had a baby. — Caitlin Moran

If you want to know what's in motherhood for you, as a woman, then - in truth - it's nothing you couldn't get from, say, reading the 100 greatest books in human history; learning a foreign language well enough to argue in it; climbing hills; loving recklessly; sitting quietly, alone, in the dawn; drinking whisky with revolutionaries; learning to do close-hand magic; swimming in a river in winter; growing foxgloves, peas and roses; calling your mum; singing while you walk; being polite; and always, always helping strangers. No one has ever claimed for a moment that childless men have missed out on a vital aspect of their existence, and were the poorer, and crippled by it. — Caitlin Moran

These hormones do not make me feel feminine: every night, I lie in bed feeling wrenched, and the bulge of my sanitary napkin in my kickers looks like a cock. — Caitlin Moran

You can crush any woman by suggesting that she's fat, not even saying the word 'fat' but just suggesting she's fat. — Caitlin Moran

Because my biggest secret of all - the one I would rather die than tell, the one I wouldn't even put in my diary - is that I really, truly, in my heart, want to be beautiful. I want to be beautiful so much - because it will keep me safe, and keep me lucky, and it's too exhausting not to be. — Caitlin Moran

I will work out exactly how - with my no money, no money at all, until I actually receive my first, dawdling pay-cheque - I will get to Birmingham later. Perhaps Birmingham will, in the next week, move closer to Wolverhampton, and I can simply walk there! — Caitlin Moran

When I saw 'Pretty In Pink' at the cinema at the age of 11, I just thought it was a period piece from maybe 100 years previously. I had no idea that was what everybody was supposed to be wearing. — Caitlin Moran

After all, everyone is bisexual after 11pm. — Caitlin Moran

I just want Tina Fey to be my best friend. And Lena Dunham. And Oprah, too. — Caitlin Moran

When I learned that flour pound for pound has as many calories as sugar, and that when eating pasta you're basically eating cake, I was size 23, and my neck was restricting my breathing, and so I got on a microbiotic diet and got myself an exercise bike. — Caitlin Moran

I'm so glad I spent 10 years being sad and lonely. — Caitlin Moran

And so I have brought this pint for him - a proper Irish pint, from Ireland. This pint - brought through the sky, and over the sea. I am finally buying my old man a good pint of Guinness. As I walk through the door, holding the glass - kids throwing themselves at me, one already crying - I hold it out to Dadda, and tell him to sip it. He tears the cling film off - looking at me, confused - and then takes a sip. "Christ. That's flat," he says. — Caitlin Moran

Most women I know love the idea of fashion, but the practicalities that go with it are just distressing. — Caitlin Moran

She is also my only friend - apart from Emily Pagett, who reminds me of Baba in The Country Girls (Edna O'Brien, Hutchinson, 1962), in that she often spreads lies about me - but which I tolerate, because she also tells me gossip about other people, which is fascinating. Even if it's also not true. I recognize that ultimately you have make your own amusement. — Caitlin Moran

It used to be if you wanted something nice to wear, you would sew it yourself for your body type. Women before the 20th century didn't have this problem. Now, it seems we're all squeezed into random designs. They're designed for no one. — Caitlin Moran

And the most important thing? To know that you were not born like this. You were not born scared and self-loathing and overwhelmed. Things have been done -which means things can be undone. It is hard work. But you are not scared of hard work, compared to everything else you have dealt with. Because what you must do right now, and for the rest of your life, is learn how to build a girl. You. — Caitlin Moran

As I've not been kissed before, I'm not really sure how you activate this function on a man. — Caitlin Moran

I could have written a misery memoir and instead I tried to make it funny. I never complained. — Caitlin Moran

I can't help but notice that in a society obsessed with fat - so eager in the appellation, so vocal in its disapproval - the only people who aren't talking about it are the only people whose business it really is. — Caitlin Moran

But nearly every woman I know has a roughly similar story - in fact, dozens of them: stories about being obsessed with a celebrity, work colleague or someone they vaguely knew for years; living in a parallel world in their head; conjuring up endless plots and scenarios for this thing that never actually happened. — Caitlin Moran

I feel in my bones that Lady Gaga is a true strident feminist and good for my soul - but how do I square this with the fact that she's constantly walking around in her bra and pants, even at, like, airports and stuff, where even nudists wear a fleece and linen drawstring trousers? — Caitlin Moran

I think there are brilliant jokes to be made about abortion, and we should be able to talk about this in the way that we make jokes about death - you should be able to make jokes about everything. — Caitlin Moran

In a world where you can get a spare kidney, a black-market Picasso or a ticket to ride into space, why can't I see some actual sex? Some actual fucking from people who want to fuck each other? Some chick in an outfit I halfway respect, having the time of her life? I have MONEY. I'm willing to PAY for this. I AM NOW A 35-YEAR-OLD WOMAN, AND I JUST WANT A MULTI-BILLION-DOLLAR INTERNATIONAL PORN INDUSTRY WHERE I CAN SEE A WOMAN COME. I just want to see a good time. — Caitlin Moran

Hearing women singing about themselves - rather than men singing about women - makes everything seem wonderfully clear, and possible — Caitlin Moran

When my children say, 'In the future, Mummy, will things get better or worse for humanity?' I say: 'Who knows, since Amy Winehouse died. It's all in the air now. Eat your broccoli.' — Caitlin Moran

There is no crueler or more inappropriate present to give a child than estrogen and a big pair of tits. — Caitlin Moran

Lines and greyness are nature's way of telling you not to fuck with someone - the equivalent of yellow and black lines on a wasp, or the markings on the back of a black widow spider. — Caitlin Moran

Why would I do that? Why would I put all this effort into pretending to be ... less than I am. — Caitlin Moran

The thing is," I say to Paul Tillich, in my head, "the thing is, Paul, that ultimately, I don't think my anxiety is ontic, moral, or spiritual." I look at him. "At the end of it all, I just need some money, Paul," I say. Paul Tillich nods. If I were rich, none of this would matter. I just need some money. — Caitlin Moran

This is Pat," he says, introducing me to a man who is also drunk. "Because I'm Pat too! We're two Pats! He's a Protestant," he adds in a stagy whisper, "but we've sorted it all out. — Caitlin Moran

But if there is to be a fifth wave of feminism, I would hope that the main thing that distinguishes it from all that came before is that women counter the awkwardness, disconnect, and bullshit of being a modern woman not by shouting at it, internalizing it, or squabbling about it - but by simply pointing at it and going "HA!" instead. — Caitlin Moran

And every book, you find, has its own social group
friends of its own it wants to introduce you to, like a party in the library that need never, ever end. — Caitlin Moran

us not forget Charlie Watts punching Mick Jagger after Jagger called him "my drummer." "You're my singer," Watts snarled, before adjusting his cuffs, and walking away. — Caitlin Moran

A self-made man - not of woman born but alchemized, through sheer force of will, by the man himself. This is what I want to be. I want to be a self-made woman. I want to conjure myself out of every sparkling, fast moving thing I can see. I want to be the creator of myself. I'm going to begat myself — Caitlin Moran

Shit," he says helplessly. "No - piss," I say, like Oscar fucking Wilde. — Caitlin Moran

It's technically impossible for a woman to argue against feminism. Without feminism you wouldn't be allowed to have a debate on a woman's place in society. You'd be too busy giving birth on the kitchen floor
biting down on a wooden spoon, so as not to disturb the men's card game
before going back to hoeing the rutabaga field. — Caitlin Moran

I remember, around age three, peas growing in the back garden. Pinching them from their pods and popping them in the mouth was my first realisation that food came from somewhere other than a shelf. — Caitlin Moran

It's very important my parent's don't think I'm starting to fall in love with people, because then they might notice that I'm growing up, and I'm kind of trying to keep it a secret. I think it will cause an incident — Caitlin Moran

If you read all your history books, there are no women in them. — Caitlin Moran

Just resolve to shine, constantly and steadily, like a warm lamp in the corner, and people will want to move towards you in order to feel happy, and to read things more clearly. You will be bright and constant in a world of dark and flux, and this will save you the anxiety of other, ultimately less satisfying things like 'being cool', 'being more successful than everyone else' and 'being very thin'. — Caitlin Moran

I am 13 years old, I am 13 stone, I have no money, no friends, and boys throw gravel at me. It's my birthday, and I went to bed at 7.15pm. — Caitlin Moran

We were all wondering - could you stop the maracas — Caitlin Moran

As Germaine Greer puts it in The Whole Woman, to become a mother without wanting it is to live like a slave, or domestic animal. — Caitlin Moran

Every woman who chooses - joyfully, thoughtfully, calmly, of their own free will and desire - not to have a child does womankind a massive favour in the long term. — Caitlin Moran

I feel excitingly ... free. Things were going to happen to me last night that I did not like - and I stopped them. I have never prevented my own doom before. I have never stood in the path of certain unhappiness and told myself - lovingly, like a mother to myself - "No! This unhappiness will not suit you! Turn around and go another way!"
I have previously been resigned to any and all fates ahead - mute and compliant, worried about seeming weird or unfuckable, or about making a fuss. But now things have changed: it seems I am now the kind of girl who can instigate a threesome - then cancel a threesome, then order a cab. I am in charge of me. I can change fates! I can reorder evenings! I can say "Yes" - and then "No!" This is new information to me. I like this information. I like all information about me. I am compiling a dossier. I am my own specialist subject. — Caitlin Moran

Some people aren't just people, but a place - a whole world. Sometimes you find someone you could live in for the rest of your life. — Caitlin Moran

... your midthirties...is the age that women usually start to feel confident. Having finally left behind the...awfulness of your twenties...your thirties are the point where the good stuff kicks in...How odd, then, that as your face and body finally begin to display the signs (lines, softening, gray hairs) that you've entered the zone of kick-ass eminence and intolerance of dullards, there should be pressure for you to...totally remove them. Give the impression that, actually, you are still a bit gullible and incompetent, and totally open to being screwed over by someone a bit cleverer and older than you... Lines and grayness are nature's way of telling you not to fuck with someone--the equivalent of the yellow-and-black banding on a wasp...Lines are your weapons against the idiots. Lines are your 'KEEP AWAY FROM THE WISE INTOLERANT WOMAN' sign. — Caitlin Moran

There is a black-and-white picture in my hallway, of me, Nancy, and Lizzie in the bath, when Nancy was eight months old and Lizzie two-and-a-half. I am gently biting Lizzie. Nancy, in turn, is gumming my face. All eyes are on the person taking the picture - Pete, who was, as the slight camera-wobble shows, laughing. There we are-a tangle of half-shared DNA, all interlocking with each other; all being watched over by the one who loves us best. If I had to explain to someone what happiness is, I would show them this picture. — Caitlin Moran

Not one had ever passed judgement on my cheap handbag to my face. But then, this is a reserved country. — Caitlin Moran

In the U.K., we have a paper called 'The Daily Mail,' which is quite misogynist. And every day, it just writes pieces about: 'Women, you're going to die now! Women, here's shoes that give you cancer! Women, just hate yourselves!' — Caitlin Moran

March against size-zero models, risible pornography, lap-dancing clubs, and Botox. We don't need to — Caitlin Moran

I'm not going to be worshipped by some powerful, loaded, sword-wielding man who will change my life if I marry him. Because that is Aragon, son of Arathorn, and he doesn't exist. — Caitlin Moran

What you are, as a teenager, is a small, silver, empty rocket. And you use loud music as fuel, and then the information in books as maps and coordinates, — Caitlin Moran

It makes you love vividly, work intensely, and realize that, in the scheme of things, you really don't have time to sit on the sofa in your undies watching Homes Under the Hammer. — Caitlin Moran

It's amazing how much you can find to say when there's one big thing you're too afraid to say: 'This isn't working. — Caitlin Moran

You actually don't exist while you're in your bedroom," I say to the dog, so that she knows this important fact. "Teenage girls in bedrooms aren't real. — Caitlin Moran

But surely they will know underneath it all I'm a good and noble person, in love with the world? Surely you get a sense of that, underneath what I'm actually saying? People must be able to smell that, underneath all the harsh words, I'm someone who still wants to own a sausage dog, and cries about Nelson Mandela. — Caitlin Moran

You wanted to become a doctor to help people and feel better at the end of your job, I think, watching them, as the nurse takes my hand. But I don't think you do feel better at the end of the day. You look like humans have constantly disappointed you. — Caitlin Moran

Because I haven't yet learned the simplest and most important thing of all: the world is difficult, and we are all breakable. So just be kind. — Caitlin Moran

I'm so tired of this shit. Batman never had to get together a petition with 250,000 signatures on it when he wanted to change things. He just went and rammed the Batcar into the Penguin's den. Why can't I ram a Batcar into the Penguin's den? I wish I was Batman. — Caitlin Moran

The more scared children are, the tighter they hug you. — Caitlin Moran

It really is important you say these words out loud. "I AM A FEMINIST." If you feel you cannot say it - not even standing on the ground - I would be alarmed. It's probably one of the most important things a woman will ever say: the equal of "I love you," Is it a boy or a girl?" or "No! I've changed my mind! I don't want bangs! — Caitlin Moran

The problem that we have is thinking there's only one kind of feminist, and that she's politically correct and right on at all times, wears flat shoes, doesn't wear makeup, probably doesn't have sex, is very angry, wears dungarees, is a vegetarian. — Caitlin Moran

Over-eating is the addiction choice of carers, and that's why it's come to be regarded as the lowest-ranking of all the addictions. — Caitlin Moran

I wish I could learn that just three drinks is enough, but I have not learned that. — Caitlin Moran

David Cameron is a C-3P0 made of ham. — Caitlin Moran

Men and women alike have convinced themselves of a dragging belief: that somehow women are incomplete without having children. — Caitlin Moran

So. Yes. We're all dying. We're all crumbling into the void, one cell at a time. We are disintegrating like sugar cubes in champagne. But only women have to pretend it isn't happening. Fifty-something men wander around with their guts flopped over their waistbands and their faces looking like a busted tramp's mattress in an underpass. They sprout nasal hair and chasm-like wrinkles, and go 'Ooof!' whenever they stand up or sit down. men visibly age, every day
but women are supposed to stop the decline at around 37, 38, and live out the next 30 or 40 years in some magical bubble where their hair is still shiny and chestnut, their face unlined, their lips puffy, and their tits up on the top third of the ribcage. — Caitlin Moran

My fat years were when I was not human shaped. I was a 16-stone triangle, with inverted triangle legs, and no real neck. And that's because I wasn't doing human things. I didn't walk or run or dance or swim or climb up stairs; the food I ate wasn't the stuff that humans are supposed to eat. No one is supposed to eat a pound of boiled potatoes covered in Vitalite, or a fist-sized lump of cheese on the end of a fork, wielded like a lollipop. I had no connection to or understanding of my body. I was just a brain in a jar. I wasn't a woman. — Caitlin Moran

Why on earth have I, because I'm a woman, got to be nice to everyone? — Caitlin Moran

Even with my freewheeling open-mindedness, I couldn't fancy Dennis - a man whose ears looked like two long pieces of bacon. — Caitlin Moran

I've learned what my contemporaries will have learned in their first terms at college, or university - that the first friends you make in a new place are the ones you usually spend the next three terms trying to lose, and that it's the people who are quietly holding back, and standing in the corner, that you will want to be with, when your second year comes around. — Caitlin Moran

Who doesn't have a friend who worships her lover with a passion that seems baffling to everyone that knows them? Before you met him for the first time, she'd talked him up like he was a cross between Indiana Jones, Barack Obama and The Doctor. When you finally meet him, he's a quiet little thing who looks like a baked bean in glasses, and actually says 'harumph' as spelt. — Caitlin Moran

The unwearable of high heels is self-evidently all around us, coming to a head at the average wedding reception, a uniformly high-heeled occasion. In our minds, we see it as a serene and elegant gathering of women in their finest, one of the big chances of the year to pretend you're at the Oscars, in your stilettos. In actuality of course, ... there are women staggering around in the unaccustomed vertical, foot-flesh spilling over tight, unkind satin. — Caitlin Moran