Feminist Author Quotes & Sayings

Fires of suffering and strife are raging around the world. — Aung San Suu Kyi

Intelligence, in diapers, is invisible. And when it matures, out the window it flies. We have to pounce on it earlier. — Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

The deeper into this chapter in my life I get, the fainter the hum of crucifixion becomes. — Maggie Young

I can't remember the words she spoke when they finally opened the garage door and yanked me inside, but I was petrified. It wasn't sound Mom's screams or the jolt of her grabbing me by the shoulders and shaking me like a rag doll that plagues my memory, but the look of her eyes- wide, wild, and unrecognizable. — Maggie Young

I'm going to go out on a limb here. I've thought a lot about this one, as a feminist, and as an author. How should traditional roles be portrayed? In fantasy literature there is a school of thought that holds that women must be treated precisely like men. Only the traditional male sphere of power and means of wielding power count. If a woman is shown in a traditionally female role, then she must be being shown as inferior.
After a lot of thought, and some real-life stabs at those traditional roles, I've come to firmly disagree with this idea. For an author to show that only traditional male power and place matter is to discount and belittle the hard and complex lives of our peers and our ancestresses. — Sarah Zettel

It's not easy to diagnose because depending where the endometrial deposits are, the symptoms can be quite different. It's an unrecognized problem among teenage girls, and it's something that every young woman who has painful menstruation should be aware of ... it's a condition that is curable if it's caught early. If not, if it's allowed to run on, it can cause infertility, and it can really mess up your life.
[Author Hilary Mantel on being asked about being a writer with endometriosis, Nov 2012 NPR interview] — Hilary Mantel

Love and Politics should be on the reading list of all activists and academics seeking to understand how feminist theory gives perspective and power to strategy and action. Charlotte Bunch, author of Passionate Politics: Feminist Theory in Action — Carol Anne Douglas

Some gangs of friends formed subgroups of five, mirroring us, where each friend could have a favorite Duran without stepping on the toes or desires of the other four friends, because if you were an Andy fan, clearly you could not be friends with another Andy fan. That would not work. You could be friends with a Nick fan, however, because there was no conflict of interest. Both friends could live together in harmony with Nick and Andy on that designated fantasy desert island for ever and ever, without a hint of envy. — Nigel John Taylor

Patriarchy is women structuring lifelong decisions around men they haven't met. — Maggie Young

I am so excited that I won The Traitor. I love Grace Burrowes books, and I do mean all of them. Thanks so much. — Grace Burrowes

I am proud being an artist who takes risks, who would walk off a cliff artistically. I won't settle for commercial reasons. — Colman Domingo

Diana was one of the quickest wits I knew; nobody made me laugh like her. — Sarah Ferguson

In the same year, the publication of Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique added fuel to the fire of a growing feminist discontent. The author spoke to middle-class White women, bored in suburbia (an escape hatch from increasingly Black cities) and seeking sanction to work at a "meaningful" job outside the home. Not only were the problems of the White suburban housewife (who may have had Black domestic help) irrelevant to Black women, they were also alien to them. Friedan's observation that "I never knew a woman, when I was growing up, who used her mind, played her own part in the world, and also loved, and had children" seemed to come from another planet. — Paula J. Giddings

Your true passion in life is what you'd be doing if somebody handed you 100 million dollars. — Maggie Young

Finding Louisa in her drawing-room was like discovering a kitten in the cupboard--not necessarily unwelcome, but still startling. — Steven Harper

Free will was the greatest gift ever offered. God is not responsible for what we did with it. We are. - The Old Man And The Wasteland — Nick Cole

You can't exploit a woman who has based her entire career on exploiting herself. — Maggie Young

I want to avoid personal attacks, ... I promise not to make fun of your singing. — Dick Cheney

Rock and roll to the beat of the funk fuzz
Wipe your feet really good on the rhythm rug
If you feel the urge to freak, do the jitterbug
Come and spread your arms if you really need a hug. — Q-Tip

But I had to think to myself that this was normal, because that was the attitude. I was 19 when I went to see my doctor and I was told it was all in the mind.
[Author Hilary Mantel on being told her endometriosis was imagined pain, From Oct 2009 Daily Mail interview] — Hilary Mantel

We shall meanly lose or nobly save the last hope of earth. — Abraham Lincoln

The secret of the creative life is to feel at ease with your own embarrassment. — Paul Schrader

Underneath your physical and psychological form, you are one with Life itself, one with Being. — Eckhart Tolle

The obsession was so real and so prolonged. Sleeping was kind of like taking breaks from continuing the obsession. — Jimenez Lai

Arrakis is a one-crop planet," his father said. "One crop. It supports a ruling class that lives as ruling classes have lived in all times while, beneath them, a semihuman mass of semislaves exists on the leavings. It's the masses and the leavings that occupy our attention. These are far more valuable than has ever been suspected. — Frank Herbert