Women Author Quotes & Sayings

If you want the Cinderella moments then you have to believe in magick. — Stephen Richards

I am done looking for love where it doesn't exist. I am done coughing up dust in attempts to drink from dry wells. — Maggie Young

The odd superstitions touched upon were all prevalent among children and slaves in the West at the period of this story - that is to say, thirty or forty years ago. Although my book is intended mainly for the entertainment of boys and girls, I hope it will not be shunned by men and women on that account, for part of my plan has been to try to pleasantly remind adults of what they once were themselves, and of how they felt and thought and talked, and what queer enterprises they sometimes engaged in. THE AUTHOR. HARTFORD, 1876. CHAPTER I "TOM!" No answer. "TOM!" No answer. "What's gone with that boy, I wonder? You TOM! — Mark Twain

Clearly, Channing had not taught her young charges that the Declaration and Constitution, while two of the noblest documents in the history of humankind, were also, naturally, products of their time that reflected the limitations of their time (which, needless to say, is why the Constitution has been amended so many times since its ratification); no, she had taught them to revile the founding fathers - men whose vision, courage, and sacrifice made possible the freedom these students have known (and taken for granted) all their lives. These young women were incapable of grasping that the very criteria by which they presumed to judge the author of the Declaration and Constitution would not be available to them if not for those men's efforts. To say this, of course, is not to blame these students for their ignorance, but to underscore just how profoundly ill-served they are by courses of this sort. — Bruce Bawer

As we women awaken and actually love our funky chunky bodies, as is, imagine how many consumer industries will go out of business. What freedom and soul free dance lovin' fun! P.S. our ancestral sisters will be sooo proud! — Jan Porter

I used to feel compelled to respond. Once I contacted the author of a list of "Ugliest Former Child Actors" to ask her why, as a woman, she was punishing other women for the way they looked. She wrote back immediately to apologise. "I write stupid things on the internet to pay the bills," she said. "I can't afford integrity. — Mara Wilson

women were considered instinctual nurses in this generation - the field had received exciting publicity during the Spanish-American War when an Army Nursing Corps had served overseas in the Philippines. Clara Weeks-Shaw, the author of a popular textbook on nursing, promoted the field as "a new activity for women - congenial, honorable and remunerative and with permanent value to them in the common experience of domestic life."3 In readable language, Weeks-Shaw presented nursing as an artful balance between self-reliance and submission. Overall its practices were an extension of maternity, requiring the classic female behaviors of cheerfulness (to the patients) and obedience (to the doctors). "Never leave a doctor alone with a gynecology patient except at his request," went one injunction. — Jean H. Baker

Women are sewers just like we are, the once pure boys recognize with a start; it's raw sewage that produces fertilization; once you understand that you can be fond of yourself and members of the Opposite Sex, but you can never quite see them again as ice cream bars. I, the author, don't really mind this, for I love all girls and love to hug and kiss them and cheer them up when they cry, and have them perform all the same services for me; and a woman's saliva is certainly a miracle, think of all those enzymes and germs; and if I took and wrote the chemicals down on a sheet of paper, all COOOHs and sighs, it would look pretty, just like a face all pretty, like the dear round moon-face of her who loves you or the creamy-freckled skin and blue eyes and heavenly hair of that Irish beauty back in college, so don't think I'm complaining. — William T. Vollmann

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 is ironic, in the manner of a dystopian nightmare, that an advanced capitalist empire which is founded on genocide and slavery, which still functions as the global police, which has an armed population, which routinely violates international human rights, which has the largest known military industrial complex in the world, which is the world's largest producer of pornography, has also produced a saccharine ideology in which 'positive thinking' functions as a form of psychological gentrification. And it is not insignificant that the neoliberal lie that one is 110% responsible for one's life - first powerfully encapsulated by the 'alternative' conservative thinker Louise Hay, and more recently echoed by Eckhart Tolle, author of The Power of Now (1997/2005) - is directed at women. Today, gendered victim-blaming has become a form of upwardly mobile common sense 'wisdom'. Now victimblaming is expressed by voices that sound soothing, wise, calm, above all, loving. — Abigail Bray

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

Morgan's argument that prehistoric societies practiced group marriage (also known as the primal horde or omnigamy - the latter term apparently coined by French author Charles Fourier) so influenced Darwin's thinking that he admitted, "It seems certain that the habit of marriage has been gradually developed, and that almost promiscuous intercourse was once extremely common throughout the world." With his characteristic courteous humility, Darwin agreed that there were "present day tribes" where "all the men and women in the tribe are husbands and wives to each other." In deference to Morgan's scholarship, Darwin continued, "Those who have most closely studied the subject, and whose judgment is worth much more than mine, believe that communal marriage was the original and universal form throughout the world ... . — Christopher Ryan

Linnet's thudding heart raced blood through her veins, sending a flush of embarrassing heat to her face. She had been avoiding him, but she could never tell him why. It took all her discipline not to quail under Sir Anthony's penetrating gaze.
Blast the man. She'd lost count of the times he'd made her feel like a blushing maiden. Strictly speaking, she was still a maiden, but she'd given up blushing years ago - along with simpering, flirting, and so many other talents deemed useful to unmarried women.
Except, of course, in Sir Anthony's august presence. — Vanessa Kelly

I am satisfied that if a book is a good one, it is so whatever the sex of the author may be. All novels are or should be written for both men and women to read, and I am at a loss to conceive how a man should permit himself to write anything that would be really disgraceful to a woman, or why a woman should be censured for writing anything that would be proper and becoming for a man. — Anne Bronte

The ragged curtains were reaching out across the room and the foot of the bed was soaked with rain. She got up and closed the window to protect her from the storm outside. However, there was no protection from the storm that was always brewing in her mind. — Nancy B. Brewer

Is a First Lady truly a necessity? Shouldn't each wife of a president have a right to choose to accept the position or not? — Venita Ellick

There is no obligation for the author of a film to believe in, or to sympathise with, the moral behaviour of his characters. Nor is he necessarily to be accredited with the same opinions as his characters. Nor is it necessary or obligatory for him to believe in the tenet of his construction - all of which is a disclaimer to the notion that the author of Drowning by Numbers believes that all men are weak, enfeebled, loutish, boorish and generally inadequate and incompetent as partners for women. But it's a thought. — Peter Greenaway

A relationship book I once read told women to use the word 'fun' whenever possible. The author claimed it had a subliminal aphrodisiac effect on men, who want a relaxed girl attached only to good times - the human equivalent of Diet Coke. This is not me. — Julie Klausner

The woman's march of today have deep roots and shoud be respected. Our country must find unification and not division, with men as well as women of all parties rallying around their cause!" Captain Hank Bracker, author of "The Exciting Story of Cuba. — Hank Bracker

Yes I am aware of the rules.
Yes I can totally see how I err the Queen.
Yes it is this very fact of slaying her language.
That gives my soul its melodies. — Malebo Sephodi

O woman! woman! thou shouldest have few sins of thine own to answer for! Thou art the author of such a book of follies in a man that it would need the tears of all the angels to blot the record out. — Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

Have you ever been friends with a girl before?"
she finally asked. "Friends?"
"Yes. Friends."
"Have a beer and shoot some pool friends? Or the kind with benefits?"
She laughed out loud, shook her head and grinned. "Have you ever been friends with a girl without having sex mixed into the equation?"
"Not since I was sixteen," he admitted and then felt his neck heat. — Peggy Jaeger

A reader kindly pointed out to me recently that most of the quotes I include are by men. And it's true. Personally, I don't even consider whether the author is male or female, nor even care much who the author is - what's significant is the message. Of course, women are equally capable of great insights, however in our culture it's not so long ago that women could not even be published — Charlotte Bronte

Books hold most of the secrets of the world, most of the thoughts that men and women have had. And when you are reading a book, you and the author are alone together-just the two of you. — E.B. White

Live the dream awake. — Tia Walker

I like life, it's wonderous and chaotic and somewhere in the middle I've created a safe place to do my thing in the world ~ I can't ask for much more & I am already so thankful when everything I got — Nikki Rowe

I wrote this book for the Nelson Mandela's of our communities who are willing to stand up for change and people who are oppressed or suppressed from fulfilling their life's purpose — Sahndra Fon Dufe

Tyler almost came off the bed when his teeth nibbled a spot. When had that become an erogenous zone? "I don't recall you ever doing that before?"
"I've had a few years to study."
"Not the best time to bring up other women."
"Books." He reassured her. "Long, lonely hours at the library...."
"If you learned that from a book, I'm calling Lilah to have her send the author flowers! — Mary J. Williams

This Author has come to the conclusion that there are rakes, and there are Rakes.
Anthony Bridgerton is a Rake.
A rake (lower-case) is youthful and immature. He flaunts his exploits, behaves with utmost idiocy, and thinks himself dangerous to women.
A Rake (upper-case) knows he is dangerous to women.
He doesn't flaunt his exploits because he doesn't need to. He knows he will be whispered about by men and women alike, and in fact, he'd rather they didn't whisper about him at all. He knows who he is and what he has done; further recountings are, to him, redundant.
He doesn't behave like an idiot for the simple reason that he isn't an idiot — Julia Quinn

Until such time as one has put to oneself a certain number of questions about an author, and has answered them, be it only to oneself alone and under one's breath, one cannot be sure of having grasped him completely, even though the questions may seem quite foreign to the nature of his writings: What were his religious ideas? How did the spectacle of nature affect him? How did he behave in the matter of women, of money? Was he rich, poor; what was his diet, his daily routine? What was his vice or his weakness? None of the answers to these questions is irrelevant. Even so, the answers tend to be surprising. However brilliant, however wise the work, it seems that the lives of artists can be relied upon to exhibit an extraordinary, incongruous range of turmoil, misery, and stupidity. — Alain De Botton

People are always telling women to lose weight, and then when they do, other women attack them for it. — Candace Bushnell

Genesis supplements "created in God's image" with the affirmation that God thus made humanity "male and female." Women and men together comprise this image. The statement is an extraordinary one in this opening chapter of Genesis, written in a patriarchal culture. One might wonder whether the author of Genesis saw the implications of this declaration. Certainly generation after generation of Christians have not seen it. We have often talked and behaved as if the male was the normal and full form of a human being, with the female a deviant and slightly inferior form. But both male and female belong to the image. You have the image of God represented in humanity only when you have both men and women there. When women are not present and involved in God's work in the world (and in the church), the image of God is not present. — John E. Goldingay

What girl doesn't love the tortured bad boy? I think when it comes to bad boys, girls/women have this desire to step forward and try to rescue that sort of individual. It is very appealing to the nurturer inside us I think.
- author Lacey Weatherford during an interview on whether she was a bad boy kinda girl — Lacey Weatherford

Even though Sam wasn't a romance author, he knew all the big ones, the heavy hitters and those that had crossed genres. He was greeted by most of the authors, some he knew and others who wanted to meet the famous author. Needless to say the romance genre remained comprised mostly by women authors. Sam stuck out like a rooster in a hen house. A tall, handsome, cool rooster in black jeans, his sunglasses hooked off the pocket of his pale blue oxford shirt. A rooster with a flock of hens following his every move. — Carolyn Gibbs

The point is obvious. There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches. Every minority, be it Baptist/Unitarian, Irish/Italian/Octogenarian/Zen Buddhist, Zionist/Seventh-day Adventist, Women's Lib/Republican, Mattachine/Four Square Gospel feels it has the will, the right, the duty to douse the kerosene, light the fuse. Every dimwit editor who sees himself as the source of all dreary blanc-mange plain-porridge unleavened literature licks his guillotine and eyes the neck of any author who dares to speak above a whisper or write above a nursery rhyme. — Ray Bradbury

Hello Readers! I look forward to adding to my author page. I — Rita Gard Seedorf

It may upset my secret sisters that I say this, but between you and me, if you're so fortunate as to have captured the perfect male, peeling off that chain-mail bikini and becoming a part-time Amazon is not so bad after all.
-Author's Note, Anne Fortier — Anne Fortier

Despite the experiences that put me in the spotlight as the co-creator of my wisdom, the human part of me keeps burning, like an alchemical process that I both accept and want to refuse. You see, it's hard when I notice women falling in love with me, and then destroying everything at the same time. And so, I'm changing the world as much as this world is changing me. The two things are inseparable. — Robin Sacredfire

I do not care a fig for any woman that knows even what an author means. — William Hazlitt

A little boy, he can play like he's a fireman or a cop
although fewer and fewer are pretending to be cops, thank God
or a deep-sea diver or a quarterback or a spaceman or a rock 'n roll star or a cowboy, or anything else glamorous and exciting (Author's note: What about a novelist, Jellybean?), and although chances are by the time he's in high school he'll get channeled into safer, duller ambitions, the great truth is, he can be any of those things, realize any of those fantasies, if he has the strength, nerve and sincere desire ... But little girls? Podner, you know that story as well as me. Give 'em doll babies, tea sets and toy stoves. And if they show a hankering for more bodacious playthings, call 'em tomboy, humor 'em for a few years and then slip 'em the bad news ... And the reality is, we got about as much chance of growing up to be cowgirls as Eskimos have got being vegetarians. — Tom Robbins

I will never accept life for what it is. I don't need an easy life. My road was meant to be hard because anything worth having in this world will take me to the very edge of myself. I will overcome everything I have ever gone through and will make my future the one God intended me to have. I will pick up the pieces of this pain and sculpt it into art. I am not ordinary and never was. I walk into my birthright as a queen with her head held high. I was born to do this! — Shannon L. Alder

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

Building an Effective Women's Ministry is a brand new book from Harvest House Publishers. Sharon Jaynes, vice president of Proverbs 31 Ministries, is the author. This book has planning helps for beginning and maintaining your women's ministries plus ideas for programs and special events. You know which section I turned to first, don't you? That's right. The idea section. Sharon has some good ideas. Great cover and helpful contents!!! — Brenda Poinsett

This book is entirely dedicated to my wife, Robin Sullivan.
Some have asked how it is I write such strong women without resorting to putting swords in their hands. It is because of her.
She is Arista.
She is Thrace.
She is Modina.
She is Amilia.
And she is my Gwen.
This series has been a tribute to her.
This is your book, Robin.
I hope you don't mind that I put down in words
How wonderful life is while you're in the world.
ELTON JOHN, BERNIE TAUPIN — Michael J. Sullivan

I have to tell you hon, I don't mind a little teasing now and then, but I'm no masochist and I'm sure as hell no saint ... here lately, being around you is agony. — Jackson Broussard

Adrienne Mayor's inquiry into the myth
and surprising reality
of Amazon women begins with the fierce Greek huntress Atalanta, but takes us deep into the past and as far afield as the Great Wall of China. With the restless curiosity and meticulous scholarship that have become her hallmark, the author once again has found a gap in my bookshelf and filled it, admirably. — Steven Saylor

A writer looks at an issue and asks, 'What if this were to occur? Or what if that was thrown into the mix? What would that look like? — Venita Ellick

Try being an indie author, a minority author, a woman, and a person with health issues in the world of traditional - that's where you are clearly 'different' and marginalized. I am all of that, yet I am still here and smiling. Life is good! — Kailin Gow

These are universals, as is the fear women feel during times of political upheaval that occur in what could still be called the outside world of men--whether during the Taiping Rebellion so many years ago or today for women in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Sudan, or even right here in this country in the post-9/11 era. On the surface, we as American women are independent, free, and mobile, but at our cores we still long for love, friendship, happiness, tranquility, and to be heard. — Lisa See

Cheating is Defeating! — Elda M. Lopez

You were right the first time, Cathy. It was a stupid, silly story.
Ridiculous! Only insane people would die for the sake of love. I'll
bet you a hundred to one a woman wrote that junky romantic trash!"
Just a minute ago I'd despised that author for bringing about such a
miserable ending, then there I went, rushing to the defense. "T. M.
Ellis could very well have been a man! Though I doubt any woman writer
in the nineteenth century had much chance of being published, unless
she used her initials, or a man's name. And why is it all men think
everything a woman writes is trivial or trashy-or just plain silly
drivel? Don't men have romantic notions? Don't men dream of finding
the perfect love? And it seems to me, that Raymond was far more
mushy-minded than Lily! — V.C. Andrews

The male author unthinkingly creates a world in which every single member of society is male except - hey presto! - when the protagonist feels like getting laid. Especially common in science fiction; apparently many writers assume that in the future women will die out. — Howard Mittelmark

The kindest thing you can offer an author is a review and a star rating. So appreciated.
THE GOLDEN PEACOCK has had a successful 5-star run on Goodreads and on Amazon. Thank you!" Lauren B. Grossman — Lauren B. Grossman

The sword of the Spirit has been muffled up and decked out with flowers and ribbons, author writes, conveying the sentiments of a Congregationist minister on men's ceding of moral and religious instruction and correction as women's work. — Nancy Pearcey

He was succeeded on the throne by RAGNAR. At this time Fro (Frey?), the King of Sweden, after slaying Siward, the King of the Norwegians, put the wives of Siward's kinsfolk in bonds in a brothel, and delivered them to public outrage. When Ragnar heard of this, he went to Norway to avenge his grandfather. As he came, many of the matrons, who had either suffered insult to their persons or feared imminent peril to their chastity, hastened eagerly to his camp in male attire, declaring that they would prefer death to outrage. Nor did Ragnar, who was to punish this reproach upon the women, scorn to use against the author of the infamy the help of those whose shame he had come to avenge. Among them was Ladgerda, a skilled amazon, who, though a maiden, had the courage of a man, and fought in front among the bravest with her hair loose over her shoulders. All-marvelled at her matchless deeds, for her locks flying down her back betrayed that she was a woman. — Saxo Grammaticus

Where is any author in the world Teaches such beauty as a woman's eye? - Love's Labor Lost. The eyes appears to be more immediately connected with the soul than any other organ. A woman reflects every emotion, almost every thought from her two wonderful, priceless eyes, and no feature of her face is more a telltale of her nature. "Show me," says the old Chinese proverb, "a man's eyes, and I will tell you what he might have been. Show me his mouth, and I will tell you what he has been." The same is true of women. Up to thirty or thirty-five a woman may be actress enough to make her eyes tell one tale, while her life would reveal another; but little by little the true state of a woman's soul stands forth in the expression, the frankness, the furtiveness, the candor, or the boldness — Harriet Hubbard Ayer

Authors often say that their novels are like their children, and you want your novel, just like your children, to reflect well on you. When it goes out into the world, you hope that it will make you proud. But like a parent, an author must learn that her novel has needs of its own, and they are not the same as the author's.
Yes, you want your son's behavior toward women to reflect a loving relationship with his mother. However, if a woman is compelled to think about that relationship whenever they're in bed together, something has gone very very wrong. — Howard Mittelmark

We live in a Patriarchal society meaning the masculine side of our mind dominates our environment. That means both men and women are identified with their masculine rational logical mind.- Author Serena Jade — Serena Jade

[When asked about Writing Conferences]
You meet people that will change your life. — Susan Wingate

While it is in no way racist for any author to write a book exclusively about white women, it is fundamentally racist for books to be published that focus solely on the American white woman's experience in which that experience is assumed to be the American woman's experience. — Bell Hooks

I felt so much more than horror. I was so afraid, shocked by what I saw. There were hundreds of men, women and children hanging from the trees ... there was blood everywhere! We all saw that every person had been gutted, like a fish. My instinct was to run, but where to ... I was on a train. As I watched those around me on the train, so many others also looked like they had explosions in their eyes and they too wanted to flee. — Alfred Nestor

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

I see God now as an unimaginative writer of popular fictions, someone who builds stories around sadistic and graceless plots, narratives that exist only to express His terror of a woman's power to choose who and how to love, to redefine love as she sees fit, not as God thinks it ought to be. The author is unworthy of His own characters. — Joe Hill

An elegantly crafted novel, "The Reluctant First Lady" clearly documents author Venita Ellick as an exceptionally accomplished writer able to skillfully weave memorable characters into a riveting story line from beginning to end. As engaging as it is entertaining, "The Reluctant First Lady" is highly recommended for both personal reading lists and community library contemporary fiction collections. — Midwest Book Review August 2013

No novel is anything, for the purposes either of comedy or tragedy, unless the reader can sympathise with the characters whose names he finds upon the pages. Let an author so tell his tale as to touch his reader's heart and draw his tears, and he has, so far, done his work well. Truth let there be, --truth of description, truth of character, human truth as to men and women. If there be such truth, I do not know that a novel can be too sensational. — Anthony Trollope

Living in the Spirit changes your attitude, thinking, and ultimately your actions. — Elizabeth George

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

Hush." He kissed her forehead. "Ever since that day, all I've wanted is a second chance. Now," he pulled her body closer, wrapped both arms around her small waist, his hand resting just above the dent in her spine. "We're both a little older, a little more mature. Some of us are much more experienced - "
"And conceited."
"Experienced," he said, the laugh in his voice quiet and seductive, "and things can be so much better. — Peggy Jaeger

He without inspiration and motivation exists no more in a world full of innovations and inventions! — Darnaya Darice

It is difficult to get men to pick up a female author. Women will read men, but men won't read women. — Lisa Gardner

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

As an author and fellow mom, my hope is that you see yourself reflected in these pages. By sharing and reading the experiences of others, my wish is that we can move forward as a generation of women who support one another, and who can work together to create a more stable system of support for the next generation. — Christine Woodcock

The purpose of marriage is not to have pleasure and to be idle, but to procreate and bring up children, to support a household. This, of course, is a huge burden full of great cares and toils. But you have been created by God to be a husband or a wife that you may learn to bear these troubles. Those who have no love for children are ... unworthy of being called men or women; for they despise the blessing of God, the creator and author of marriage. — Martin Luther

Embrace your inner goddess, never let go of the light you carry within. — Cynthia Dougherty-Bernal