Quotes about girls
page 14

“A Bedouin came and said, "O Allah's Apostle! Judge between us according to Allah's Laws." His opponent got up and said, "He is right. Judge between us according to Allah's Laws." The Bedouin said, "My son was a laborer working for this man, and he committed illegal sexual intercourse with his wife. The people told me that my son should be stoned to death; so, in lieu of that, I paid a ransom of one hundred sheep and a slave girl to save my son. Then I asked the learned scholars who said, "Your son has to be lashed one-hundred lashes and has to be exiled for one year." The Prophet said, "No doubt I will judge between you according to Allah's Laws. The slave-girl and the sheep are to go back to you, and your son will get a hundred lashes and one year exile."”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

He then addressed somebody, "O Unais! go to the wife of this (man) and stone her to death" So, Unais went and stoned her to death.
Narrated Abu Huraira and Zaid bin Khalid Al-Juhani [3, 49, 860]
Sunni Hadith

Death, People, Law, Learning

“On, on we went, till at last the east began to blush like the cheek of a girl. Then there came faint rays of primrose light, that changed presently to golden bars, through which the dawn glided out across the desert. The stars grew pale and paler still, till at last they vanished; the golden moon waxed wan, and her mountain ridges stood out against her sickly face like the bones on the cheek of a dying man. Then came spear upon spear of light flashing far away across the boundless wilderness, piercing and firing the veils of mist, till the desert was draped in a tremulous golden glow, and it was day.”

H. Rider Haggard book King Solomon's Mines

Source: King Solomon's Mines (1885), Chapter 5, "Our March into the Desert"

Mountain, Star, Light, Change

“Here is how my father appeared to me as a boy. He came from a race of giants and demi-gods from a mythical land known as Chicago. He married the most beautiful girl ever to come crawling out of the poor and lowborn south, and there were times when I thought we were being raised by Zeus and Athena. After Happy Hour my father would drive his car home at a hundred miles an hour to see his wife and seven children. He would get out of his car, a strapping flight jacketed matinee idol, and walk toward his house, his knuckles dragging along the ground, his shoes stepping on and killing small animals in his slouching amble toward the home place. My sister, Carol, stationed at the door, would call out, "Godzilla's home!" and we seven children would scamper toward the door to watch his entry. The door would be flung open and the strongest Marine aviator on earth would shout, "Stand by for a fighter pilot!" He would then line his seven kids up against the wall and say, "Who's the greatest of them all?" "You are, O Great Santini, you are." "Who knows all, sees all, and hears all?" "You do, O Great Santini, you do."”

Pat Conroy (1945–2016) American novelist

We were not in the middle of a normal childhood, yet none of us were sure since it was the only childhood we would ever have. For all we knew other men were coming home and shouting to their families, "Stand by for a pharmacist," or "Stand by for a chiropractor".
Eulogy for a Fighter Pilot (1998)

Men, God, Happiness, Children

“There's something in the way she eases my mind
And lays me across the bed till I close my eyes.
Stirs me in the morning till I can't ever be satisfied.
I leave Carolina every night in my dreams,
Like the girls that try to love me that I only leave.
Rock me like a baby doll and hold me to your chest,
But I'm always moving too fast.”

Ryan Adams (1974) American alt-country/rock singer-songwriter

When Will You Come Back Home?
29 (2005)

Love, Dreams, Way, Baby

“And we talked of girls, and dropping bombs on Rome,
And thought of the quiet dead and the loud celebrities
Exhorting us to slaughter.”

Alun Lewis (1915–1944) Welsh poet

"All Day It Has Rained", line 17, from Raider's Dawn and Other Poems (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1942) p. 16.

Dead

“People always blame the girl; she should have said no. A monosyllable, but conventional wisdom has always been that boys can't manage it.”

Anna Quindlen (1952) journalist, Novelist

The New York Times, sect. 4, p. 13 (April 11, 1993).

Wisdom, People, Boy

“No girl, however coolly her blood may flow, can be pressed to a man's breast, wildly throbbing with love for her, and not experience some agitation in consequence. Whatever may be the state of her sentiments, there is a magnetism in such a contact which she cannot at once throw off. That kiss had brought her relations with Henry to a crisis. It had precipitated the necessity of some decision. She could no longer hold him off, and play with him. By that bold dash he had gained a vantage-ground, a certain masterful attitude which he had never held before. Yet, after all, I am not sure that she was not just a little afraid of him, and, moreover, that she did not like him all the better for it.”

Edward Bellamy (1850–1898) American author and socialist

Source: Dr. Heidenhoff's Process http://www.gutenberg.org/files/7052/7052-h/7052-h.htm (1880), Ch. 3.

Love, Kiss, Decision

“I know there's been some debate about the DVD art. Just remember it's what's INside that counts, as I used to remind girls in high school constantly. CONSTANTLY — until I realized that I was empty inside. Empty and homely. Man, that's a rough combo.”

Joss Whedon (1964) American director, writer, and producer for television and film

"Joss to never learn how to work site! Man is complete Melvin! Mock him!" at Whedonesque.com (9 November 2005)

School, Art, Home

“To the world,
You may be just another girl.
But to me,
Baby, you are the world.”

Brad Paisley (1972) American country music singer

The World, written by Brad Paisley, Kelley Lovelace, and Lee Thomas Miller
Song lyrics, Time Well Wasted (2005)

World, Baby

“Translation:I have spend a long time thinking, the arbitrators who holds the power calling others cheap, I don't see how elegant they are, for example, it is cheap to go for a $100 prostitute, but to spend one million on a show girl(singers or actress) is elegant, looking at porno is cheap, reading Red Head documents(all Communist documents have red color heading) is elegant, it is cheap to buy a replica gun, it is elegant to gun down two men in one go, it is cheap to play World of Warcraft, it is elegant to have sex with fashion models…”

Han Han (1982) Chinese writer and racing driver

From Han Han's blog: Beginning from today, I shall be a cheap man. 从今天起，做一个低俗的人 http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_4701280b0100gnj4.html

Men, World, Sex, Color

“Wop boys rock my world
I like to play with all my girls
But money makes me hard and tight
I love to bathe in cash and pearls”

Erika Jayne (1969) American singer, actress and television personality

"Roller Coaster"
Song lyrics, Pretty Mess (2009)

Love, Money, World, Boy

“Vivian stared. Never had she seen a boy with such long hair! In fact, she had a vague notion that boys were born with their hair short back and sides and only girls had hair that grew long.”

Diana Wynne Jones book A Tale of Time City

Source: A Tale of Time City (1987), pp. 16-17.

Boy

“If they (the ASME) had not been (aware of human problems involved) — and Taylor either failed to encounter, or to recognize the significance of, the early work in industrial psychology contributed by Walter Dill Scott, Hugo Munsterberg, and others — there was the amazing fact that one of them, Frank Bunker Gilbreth, happened to fall in love with a girl who was a psychologist by education, a teacher by profession, and a mother by vocation. I know of no occurrence in the whole history of human thought more worthy of the epithet "providential" than that fact. Here were three engineers — Taylor, Gantt, and Gilbreth — struggling to realize the wider implications of their technique, in travail with a "mental revolution," their great danger that they might not appreciate the difference between applying scientific thinking to material things and to human beings, and one of them married Lillian Moller, a woman who by training, by instinct, and by experience was deeply aware of human beings, the perfect mental complement in the work to which they had set their hands.”

Lyndall Urwick (1891–1983) British management consultant

Cited in: Harold F. Smiddy and Lionel Naum. " Evolution of a "Science of Managing" in America https://archive.org/details/selectedreadings00shul," in: Selected readings in management, Fremont A. Shull (edd), 1957. p. 16-17 1950s, "Management's Debt to the Engineers", 1952

Love, Education, History, Problem

“"This moment in time,"
(She said.)
It doesn't belong to you,"
(She said,)
It belongs to me,
And your little boy and your little girl,
And the one hand clapping:
Where on your palm is my little line,
When you're written in mine
As an old memory?”

Kate Bush (1958) British recording artist; singer, songwriter, musician and record producer

Song lyrics, Hounds of Love (1985), The Ninth Wave

Boy, Memory, Time

“First of all,” said Dr. Nacozi to me, “I want you to know that I realize you have a brilliant mind.” “Me?” I said, feeling shocked. “Yes, you,” he said. “And maybe you haven’t done that well in school in the past, but this is all about to change very rapidly for you, because the further you go in university life, the more apt you are to find minds like your own. I never had many friends until I got into graduate school. Before that … well, I always felt confused and lost,” he said, laughing. “And not very capable with the girls and in my social life, either.”

Victor Villaseñor (1940) American writer

Crazy Loco Love: A Memoir (2008)

Life, School, Feeling, Universe

“"One thing there's no getting by—
I've been a wicked girl." said I;
"But if I can't be sorry, why,
I might as well be glad!"”

Edna St. Vincent Millay book A Few Figs from Thistles

From "The Penitent", A Few Figs from Thistles (1922)

“I don't like American girls. They're very conceited, you know. In Europe they're more pleasant.”

Bobby Fischer (1943–2008) American chess prodigy, chess player, and chess writer

1960s, Portrait of a Genius As a Young Chess Master (1961)

“We often think that when a man insults another man by calling him a “girl,” the insult reflects a contempt for women. No. It reflects a contempt for any man who is unwilling to make himself strong enough to protect someone as precious as a woman.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say (2000)

Women, Thinking, Strong

“They had this movie called Juno about a teenage girl who gets pregnant and it's nominated for an Oscar. That's an unusual experience for me, 'cause when a black girl gets pregnant it ain't no Oscar. It's social work and a box of condoms is what that is.”

D. L. Hughley (1963) American actor and comedian

Appearance on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno (January 17, 2008)

Box

“The red-faced president took afternoon tea
With her majesty The Queen
And they watched old films flicker
Across the old palace movie screen
Crying, "What a shame!"
As she slipped in the rain
Poor dancing girl
Well, she won't dance again…”

Pete Doherty (1979) English musician, writer, actor, poet and artist

"Radio America"(with Carl Barat)
Lyrics and poetry

Dance, Tea, Cry

“Put anthrax on your Tampax and slap you 'till you can't stand! Girl, you just blew your chance, don't mean to ruin your plans!”

Eminem (1972) American rapper and actor

"Superman"
2000s, The Eminem Show (2002)

Chance

“I hadn’t learned much in high school; I had majored in girls.”

Robert A. Heinlein book The Number of the Beast

Source: The Number of the Beast (1980), Chapter IX : Most males have an unhealthy tendency to obey laws., p. 81

School, Learning

“And the redheaded girl from St. Louis who always asked about the Filipinos…Endlessly she spoke of the Filipinos, pitied them, thought them so brave in the face of prejudice. One day she was gone, and another day I saw her again, walking the streets, her copper hair catching sunbeams, a short Filipino holding her arm. He was very proud of her. His padded shoulders and tight waisted suit were the ultimate of tenderloin fashion, but even with the high leather heels he was a foot shorter than she.”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Source: Ask the Dust (1939), Chapter Seven

Fashion

“Nine-tenths of our crimes an' calamities are made possible by th' automobile. It has unleashed all th' pent-up criminal tendencies o' th' ages. It's th' central figure in murders, hold-ups, burglaries, accidents, elopements, failures an' abscondments. It has well nigh jimmed th' American home…. No girl is missin' that wuzn' last seen steppin' in a strange automobile…. An' ther hain't a day rolls by that somebuddy hain't sellin' ther sewin' machine, or ther home, or somethin' t' pay on an automobile…. Maybe th' jails an' workhouses are empty, but that's not because th' world is gittin' better. It's because all th' criminals escape in automobiles.”

Kin Hubbard (1868–1930) cartoonist

Writing as his character, "th' Hon. Ex.-Editur Cale Fluhart." as quoted in The American Humorist : Conscience of the Twentieth Century (1964) by Norris W. Yeats, p. 107.

Age, World, Home, Failure

“Boy dressed as the devil: Everybody's afraid of the devil!
Girl: Not me!
Boy dressed as a ghost: How come?
Girl: Because Jesus loves me and the devil is afraid of Jesus.”

Jack T. Chick (1924–2016) Christian comics writer

Chick tracts, " The Little Ghost http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/1010/1010_01.asp" (2001)

Love, Boy

“The existence of these evils among the Muslims is distressing enough. But far more distressing is the fact that there is no organized movement of social reform among the Musalmans of India on a scale sufficient to bring about their eradication. The Hindus have their social evils. But there is relieving feature about them-namely, that some of them are conscious of their existence and a few of them are actively agitating for their removal. Indeed, they oppose any change in their existing practices. It is noteworthy that the Muslims opposed the Child-Marriage Bill brought in the Central Assembly in 1930, whereby the age for marriage of a girl was raised to 14 and of a boy to 18 on the ground that it was opposed to the Muslim cannon law. Not only did they oppose the bill at every stage but that when it became law they started a campaign of Civil Disobedience against that Act.”

Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (1891–1956) Father of republic India, champion of human rights, father of India's Constitution, polymath, revolutionary…

Source: Pakistan or The Partition of India (1946), p. 233

Marriage, Age, Law, Boy

“Like the ski resort full of girls hunting for husbands and husbands hunting for girls the situation is not as symmetrical as it might seem.”

Alan Lindsay Mackay (1926) British crystallographer

[2007, New Theories of Everything, https://books.google.cz/books?id=JJ1aDC_wYM0C&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false, Oxford University Press] by John D. Barrow.

“I want to be the poster girl for engineers and computer nerds.”

Alessandra Torresani (1987) American actress

Hugh Hart Wired Magazine http://www.wired.com/underwire/2010/01/alessandra-torresani/all/1 Alessandra Torresani Gets Inside Caprica’s Prime Cylon (January 21, 2010).

“The fabulous Eva, Government Glad-Hand Girl No. 1 of the extravagant political novelette that is Argentina.”

James Cameron (journalist) (1911–1985) British journalist

The Daily Express, March 17, 1949.

“You must remember, Father,’ said Mavis, in a voice which would have had an Eskimo slapping his ribs and calling for the steam-heat, ‘that this girl was probably very pretty. So many of these New York girls are. That would, of course, explain Frederick's behaviour.”

P.G. Wodehouse book Young Men in Spats

Young Men in Spats (1936)

“I found myself at the top of the the ladder, with everything, but with one thing missing: that one thing was a companion. Because, it's cliché to say, but nothing really means anything in the end unless you're really doing what you want to do, and… I walked off a huge world tour, with a yacht and television specials, and record deals, and film deals. I walked away and my whole thing collapsed. I shocked my business world and walked back to my cottage, which I had been renting to two American girls. One of them was Cynthia, and I stayed with her for two days, then her friend Lori came back from Clapton's house, where there had been a party going on for almost a week. Lori came in with another friend, and it was Linda, my Sunshine Supergirl from 1965 whom I'd written all my songs for. We hadn't married then, because she had a child with Brian Jones and wasn't ready for another relationship. And it was good that we didn't marry back then, because my four years of '60's fame would have wrecked the marriage. But we met again, and I went away from fame and into the arms of my muse, my lover, and then my wife, and then the mother of my children.”

Donovan (1946) Scottish singer, songwriter and guitarist

Grip interview (1997)

Marriage, Children, World, Lovers

“I know I’m also the girl who’s Chinese family doesn’t speak Chinese, and I’ve grown up watching Western philosophy movies teaching me that I should follow my heart and that I can do and be anything I desire. It almost feels like sometimes I’m too Asian, and then other times I’m not Asian enough. I don’t know… I’m not typical. I don’t fit the box. I’m just ME… Moments like these push me to grow and become better and all I can do is be the best me I can be and trust that what’s right for me will come along.”

Nikki SooHoo (1988) American actress

My Reflection in Mulan http://nikkisoohoo.com/blog/2016/11/7/my-reflection-in-mulan (November 7, 2016)

Family, Feeling, Time, Heart

“I think that it's really an early age… I would feel proud, when I would work for education, when I would have done something, when I would be feeling confident to tell people, 'Yes! I have built that school; I have done that teachers' training, I have sent that (many) children to school'… Then if I get the Nobel Peace Prize, I will be saying, Yeah, I deserve it, somehow… I want to become a Prime Minister of Pakistan, and I think it's really good. Because through politics I can serve my whole county. I can be the doctor of the whole country… I can spend much of the money from the budget on education," she told It appears that becoming prime minister is a means to the end she has dedicated her life to… [in recalling when she got shot] He asked, 'Who is Malala?' He did not give me time to answer his question… He fired three bullets… One bullet hit me in the left side of my forehead, just above here, and it went down through my neck and into my shoulder… But still if I look at (it), it's a miracle… A Nobel Peace Prize would help me to begin this campaign for girls' education… But the real call, the most precious call, that I want to get and for which I'm thirsting and for which I want to struggle hard, that is the award to see every child to go to school, that is the award of peace and education for every child. And for that, I will struggle and I will work hard.”

Malala Yousafzai (1997) Pakistani children's education activist

Interview on CNN with Christiane Amanpour (October 11, 2013)

Life, Money, Children, People

“In his fawning hagiography of Teddy Kennedy, Clymer wrote that Kennedy's liberal voting record made up for his killing that girl at Chappaquiddick. I didn't believe it either, but Clymer actually wrote: Kennedy's "achievements as a senator have towered over his time, changing the lives of far more Americans than remember the name Mary Jo Kopechne." (A review in The Washington Monthly said Clymer's Chappaquiddick section did "not sugarcoat his subject's flaws.")
This is the way addled liberals really think. Even as they champion sucking the brains out of little babies, they think of themselves as indelibly compassionate because they favor an overweening, behemoth federal government.”

Ann Coulter (1961) author, political commentator

2000

Way, Thinking, Change, Time

“Well now you say you've found another man who does things to you that I can't,
And that no matter what I do it's all over now between me and you girl.
But I can't believe what you say;
No I can't believe what you say 'cause babyI don't wanna fade away.
Oh I don't wanna fade away.
Tell me what can I do, what can I say
'Cause darlin' I don't wanna fade away.”

Bruce Springsteen (1949) American singer and songwriter

"Fade Away"
Song lyrics, The River (1980)

“By 1956, out of all the Cultural Avatars and Vectors available in 1950, THE GIRL had won. Authority. (And they had it, those girls; no one today has it.) They’d won the war, in a way.”

George W. S. Trow (1943–2006) American writer

My Pilgrim’s Progress (1999)

War, Way

“The ploughman ploughs, the fisherman dreams of fish;
Aloft, the sailor, through a world of ropes
Guides tangled meditations, feverish
With memories of girls forsaken, hopes
Of brief reunions, new discoveries,
Past rum consumed, rum promised, rum potential.”

Michael Hamburger (1924–2007) British translator, poet, critic, memoirist and academic

Lines On Brueghel's "Icarus" http://www.themediadrome.com/content/poetry/hamburger_lines_on_icarus.htm

World, Dreams, Hope, Fish

“It's a long way to Tipperary,
It's a long way to go.
It's a long way to Tipperary,
To the sweetest girl I know!
Goodbye Piccadilly,
Farewell Leicester Square!
It's a long long way to Tipperary,
But my heart's right there.”

Jack Judge (1878–1938) British song-writer and music-hall entertainer

Song It's a Long Way to Tipperary

Way, Heart

“I hope through The L Word to become an honorary member of the gay tribe. I cherish the thought that some young girl or woman somewhere may one night turn on the television and for the first time ever see her life represented -- not as an isolated incident but as a multiplicity. Her overwhelming fear may have been that she might never find her tribe, she might never find love and now she knows that they are both out there waiting for her.”

Jennifer Beals (1963) American actress and a former teen model

Speech at L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center Women's Night (17 April 2004) http://www.jennifer-beals.com/media/speeches/womensnight2004.html.

Love, Life, Fear, Hope

“Under Shahjahan, Akbar's Sulehkul was almost reversed. During his reign temples were destroyed in Gujarat, Banaras and Allahabad, and at Orchha. Like Jahangir he stopped marriages between Muslim girls and Hindu men. Apostasy from Islam again became a capital crime in accordance with the tenets of the Shariat. During the reign of Shahjahan titles in use among Khalifas and Ghaznavids were revived.”

Shah Jahan (1592–1666) 5th Mughal Emperor

Lal, K. S. (1999). Theory and practice of Muslim state in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 2

Men, Marriage

“ah, So u persecute Jared Fogle just because he has different beliefs? Do Tell. (girls get mad at me) Sorry. Im sorry. Im trying to remove it”

Dril Twitter user

[ Link to tweet https://twitter.com/dril/status/660644922744262656] Tweets by year, 2015

Madness

“A girl has the power to go forward in her life. And she’s not only a mother, she’s not only a sister, she’s not only a wife. But a girl has the – she should have an identity. She should be recognized and she has equal rights as a boy.”

Malala Yousafzai (1997) Pakistani children's education activist

Nobel Peace Prize Winner Speech (October 10, 2014)

Life, Boy, Sister

“To be alone with the girl to whom he is not engaged, is a man's delight; — to be alone with the man to whom she is engaged is the woman's.”

Anthony Trollope book The Eustace Diamonds

The Eustace Diamonds, Ch. 18

“Great Britain is certainly suspect to Americans. They cannot make head or tail of her. She is a stuck-up old girl who owes a lot of money - an odd thing for such a highly respectable old lady to do. She is rather flighty, which is alarming in one so old - she never seems quite serious, that is - goes into giggles all of a sudden, or smiles enigmatically, if politely. She seems to the average American slightly phoney. Let us face up to that. She has many habits which baffle and put one on one's guard - the curious way she has of speaking English with a foreign accent, for instance. Then she must be the most quarrelsome old dame which ever stepped: always - umbrella in hand - getting into scraps with her neighbours, and spitting at them over the garden wall.”

Wyndham Lewis (1882–1957) writer and painter

The Hitler Cult (Dent, 1949)

Money, Smile, Way

“No Cricklewood girl would ever admit to being from there.”

Jean Simmons (1929–2010) British-American actress

Of her birthplace; Guardian, 23 Jan 2010 http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/jan/23/the-unforgettable-jean-simmons

“I was the baby of a large family, and as a youngster fresh to an infant school my mother tried to break me of lefthandedness. I always held my knife in the left hand and fork in the right. One day at dinner my mother said, ' You're not a boy; you must be girl to eat your food like that. We shall have to call you Peggy.' My elder brothers, always glad to take it out of me, carried that name to school, where the other boys seized upon it, and it has stuck to me through a life-time, though it is years since anybody was curious enough to ask how I got it.”

Arthur Frederick Bettinson (1862–1926) Manager and promoter of the National Sporting Club

Life, School, Family, Food

“I went to a friend who's a girl and asked her, 'What's it like to have sex for the first time, if you're Irish – so you're modest, and it's the 1950s – so you've never seen it in a film?' I listened carefully to what she said, and I put it in the book. It was an important element, the detail was richly memorable for the person, it had to be in the book.”

Colm Tóibín (1955) Irish novelist and writer

On a heterosexual sex scene in Brooklyn. Let's not talk about sex – why passion is waning in British books http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/oct/16/sex-disappearing-from-novels, The Guardian (16 October 2010)

Books, Sex, Time, Personality

“To undress is the dress code these days and I didn't start it. We are all voyeurs, so why the complaints? Until girls don't walk in a swimsuit on the stage they don't get the crown so why is everyone so holier-than-thou?”

Mallika Sherawat (1976) Indian actress

[The Babe with Balls, http://www.binabakshi.com/journalism.htm, Bina Bakshi, May 2004]

“A girl can’t control who will and who won’t fall in love with her, Ethan. And sometimes, when a nuisance person falls in love with you, it can be awfully… awkward.”

Douglas Coupland book JPod

JPod (2006)

Love, Personality

“So hard to find my way,
Now that I'm all on my own.
I saw you just the other day,
My how you have grown,
Cast my memory back there, Lord
Sometimes I'm overcome thinking 'bout
Making love in the green grass
Behind the stadium with you
My brown eyed girl
You my brown eyed girl.”

Van Morrison (1945) Northern Irish singer-songwriter and musician

Brown Eyed Girl
Song lyrics, Blowin' Your Mind! (1967)

Love, Making love, Way, Thinking

“i lvoe and cherish all of the girls of this site, and other websites. you all become my wife more and more with each passing day. Thank you”

Dril Twitter user

[ Link to tweet https://twitter.com/dril/status/836155612425773056] Tweets by year, 2017

“The meaning of the word “feminist” has not really changed since it first appeared in a book review in the Athenaeum of April 27, 1895, describing a woman who “has in her the capacity of fighting her way back to independence.” It is the basic proposition that, as Nora put it in Ibsen's A Doll's House a century ago, “Before everything else I'm a human being.” It is the simply worded sign hoisted by a little girl in the 1970 Women's Strike for Equality: I AM NOT A BARBIE DOLL. Feminism asks the world to recognize at long last that women aren't decorative ornaments, worthy vessels, members of a “special-interest group”. They are half (in fact, now more than half) of the national population, and just as deserving of rights and opportunities, just as capable of participating in the world's events, as the other half. Feminism's agenda is basic It asks that women not be forced to “choose” between public justice and private happiness. It asks that women be free to define themselves — instead of having their identity defined for them, time and again, by their culture and their men.”

Susan Faludi book Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women

Backlash (1992)

Women, Men, Happiness, Books

“In Mexico City they somehow wandered into an exhibition of paintings by the beautiful Spanish exile Remedios Varo: in the central painting of a triptych, titled “Bordando el Manto Terrestre,” were a number of frail girls with heart-shaped faces, huge eyes, spun-gold hair, prisoners in the top room of a circular tower, embroidering a kind of tapestry which spilled out the slit windows and into a void, seeking hopelessly to fill the void: for all the other buildings and creatures, all the waves, ships and forests of the earth were contained in the tapestry, and the tapestry was the world.”

Thomas Pynchon book The Crying of Lot 49

Source: The Crying of Lot 49 (1966), Chapter 1

World, Beauty, Heart, Painting

“The oldest girl [his daughter Maro, four and a half years old] did this. She paints like a little bird. And this, the young one [Natasha, two and a half] did. See, she paints on both sides of the canvas. She is more like a passionate plumber. I wish I could paint as freely as they do. There is a gravity of playfulness in their work. If they could only keep it – but they will lose it as they grow older.”

Arshile Gorky (1904–1948) Armenian-American painter

1942 - 1948, A Painter in a Glass House' (1948)

Bird, Passion, Painting, Daughters

“The failure of women to produce great works of art and all that can be explained in terms of this statement. Insofar as she escapes or rejects her conditioning, the little girl may excel in those kinds of intellectual activity that are called creative, but eventually she either capitulates to her conditioning, or the conflicts become so pressing that her efficiency is hampered.”

Germaine Greer book The Female Eunuch

The Raw Material
The Female Eunuch (1970)

Women, Art, Failure

“Poor, poor pitiful me.
Poor, poor pitiful me.
These young girls won't let me be.
Lord have mercy on me.
Woe is me.”

Warren Zevon (1947–2003) American singer-songwriter

"Poor Poor Pitiful Me"
Warren Zevon (1976)

“I'm a tough old broad from Brooklyn. Don't try to make me into something I'm not. If you want someone to tiptoe down the Barkley staircase in crinoline and politely ask where the cattle went, get another girl.”

Barbara Stanwyck (1907–1990) American actress

Quoted in Gary A. Yoggy, Back in the saddle: essays on Western film and television actors (1998), Page 122 http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=pLbMzGDhTOIC&pg=PA122&dq=%22%22tough+old+broad+from+Brooklyn%22%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=43MyT7SXD6Lc4QTqxMCEBQ&ved=0CDEQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22%22tough%20old%20broad%20from%20Brooklyn%22%22&f=false

“The girl is mettle to the back.”

Charles Coffey Irish composer

Boarding-School, Sc. 5. (1733)

“Fighting battles is like courting girls: those who make the most pretensions and are boldest usually win.”

Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893) American politician, 19th President of the United States (in office from 1877 to 1881)

As quoted in The Complete Book of U.S. Presidents (1991) by William A. DeGregorio, p. 290

Fight

“"It looks as if you need only enter the field for long enough to recognise the bannus and take hold of it. Then you order it to stop."
"Fight my way through a mob of dancing girls and snatch the dulcimer off the leading damsel," Reigner Two said morbidly. "I can just see myself. I think the fools who invented this thing might have thought of a simpler way to stop it. What's wrong with a red switch?"”

Diana Wynne Jones book Hexwood

Source: Hexwood (1993), p. 138.

Fools, Way, Thinking, Dance

“Oh Brancepeth,’ said the girl, her voice trembling, ‘why haven’t you any money? If only you had the merest pittance - enough for a flat in Mayfair and a little weekend place in the country somewhere and a couple of good cars and a villa in the South of France and a bit of trout fishing on some decent river, I would risk all for love.”

P.G. Wodehouse book Lord Emsworth and Others

Lord Emsworth and Others (1937)

Love, Money, Cars, Fish

“Tragabigzanda was a rather large girl. Later on, Captain Smith named a portion of Massachusetts after her. [Footnote: This was afterwards changed to Cape Ann, because you really can't have a part of Massachusetts named Tragabigzanda. ]”

Will Cuppy (1884–1949) American writer

The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody (1950), Part VI: Now We're Getting Somewhere, Captain John Smith

Change, Parting

“At this exquisite vision Tip's old comrades stared in wonder for the space of a full minute, and then every head bent low in honest admiration of the lovely Princess Ozma. The girl herself cast one look into Glinda's bright face, which glowed with pleasure and satisfaction, and then turned upon the others. Speaking the words with sweet diffidence, she said: "I hope none of you will care less for me than you did before. I'm just the same Tip, you know; only — only — "
"Only you're different!"”

L. Frank Baum book The Marvelous Land of Oz

said the Pumpkinhead; and everyone thought it was the wisest speech he had ever made.
The Marvelous Land of Oz (1904)
Later Oz novels

Love, Pleasure, Hope, Princess

“…girls who had read Wittgenstein as high school baby-sitters were rejected because the school’s quota of abnormally intelligent students had already been filled that year.”

Randall Jarrell book Pictures from an Institution

Source: Pictures from an Institution (1954) [novel], Chapter 3: “Miss Batterson and Benton”, p. 80

School, Intelligence, Reading, Baby

“(talking about how girls like mystery) Next time your lady leaves the room, take a dump on the floor! 'Cuz there is nothing more mysterious than a dump on the floor! And it always starts a conversation, am I right? Honey, what happened? You better hold me 'cause I'm afraid.”

Dave Attell (1965) comedian

Comedy Central Presents: Dave Attell

Time

“You recall a girl that's been in nearly every song?
This is what I heard of course the story could be wrong.She's the one — I've been told
Now she's wearing a band of gold.
Peggy Sue got married not long ago.”

Buddy Holly (1936–1959) American singer-songwriter

Peggy Sue Got Married (1959)
Song lyrics, Singles

“The spiraling shapes, and the beautiful contrasts of yellow and blue, that are intuitively felt one evening while living the movements of a girl dancing may be found again later, through a process of plastic preferences or aversions, or through combination of both, in the concentric circling of an aeroplane or in the onrush of an express train”

Gino Severini (1883–1966) Italian painter

In his manifesto 'The Plastic Analogies of Dynamism', c. 1914; as quoted in Inventing Futurism: The Art and Politics of Artificial Optimism, by Christine Poggi, Princeton University Press, 2009, p. 218

Beauty, Dance, Training

“I'm so much happier now that people seem to find better things to ask me about than all my "accomplishments" from when I was a little girl. I feel like that was so long ago, and so irrelevant to who I am now, that I am glad the focus isn't really on that as much any more.”

Alicia Witt (1975) American actress

AOL Live (1996)

People, Feeling

“FRANCIS PICABIA
is an imbecile, an idiot, a pickpocket!!!
1921
BUT
He saved Arp from constipation!
The first mechanical work was created
by madam Tzara the Day she put
little Tristan into the world, however she
didn't know it
funny girl
Francis Picabia
is an imbecilic Spanish professor
who has never been dada
FRANCIS PICABIA IS NOTHING
FRANCIS PICABIS likes the morality of idiots
Arp's binocle is Tristan’s testicle
FRANCIS PICABIS IS NOTHING!!!!!!!!!!
But Arp was Dada before Dada.”

Francis Picabia (1879–1953) French painter and writer

Quote of Picabia in his 'Manifesto, 1921'; as cited in Manifesto: A Century of Isms, ed. Mary Ann Caws, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001, p 319
1920's

World

“Look at your [English] ladies of quality—are they not forever parting with their husbands—forfeiting their reputations—and is their life aught but dissipation? In common genteel life, indeed, you may now and then meet with very fine girls—who have politeness, sense and conversation—but these are few—and then look at your trademen's daughters—what are they?—poor creatures indeed! all pertness, imitation and folly.”

Frances Burney (1752–1840) English writer

The Early Journals and Letters of Fanny Burney, vol. 1, p. 47, journal entry, November 17, 1768.
Letters

Life, Sense, Parting, Daughters

“I’m so thankful that all that stuff made it to the screen, because a lot of the time studio executives say that there’s no time, or ask why we should feel sympathy for this bad guy. I joke that I’m the romantic lead in the movie, I just happened to pick the wrong girl. Imhotep is kind of the tragic villain, I guess, and a lot of people have come up to me and said I was hating you, but then I reach a point when I was feeling sorry for you too. It's those different facets that help explain why this film is such a success”

Arnold Vosloo (1962) South African-American actor

Interview: Arnold Vosloo http://www.bbc.co.uk/films/2001/05/11/arnold_vosloo_article.shtml (May 11, 2001)

Hate, People, Guy, Feeling

“Kochu Maria watched with her cake-crumbs.
The Fond Smiles watched Fondly.
Little Girls Playing.
Sweet.
One beach-coloured.
One brown.
One Loved.
One Loved a Little Less.”

Arundhati Roy book The God of Small Things

page 186
The God of Small Things (1997)

Love, Smile

“Children till 10. years old to serve as nurses. from 10. to 16. the boys make nails, the girls spin. at 16. go into the ground or learn trades.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Jefferson's Farm Book as quoted in The Dark Side of Thomas Jefferson http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-dark-side-of-thomas-jefferson-35976004/, by Henry Wiencek, Smithsonian Magazine, (October 2012) Attributed

Children, Boy, Learning

“The unkissed girls and boys of paradise
Are lining up around the block
Back pockets full of dynamite
While their neighbors talk and talk.”

St. Vincent (musician) (1982) American singer-songwriter

"Black Rainbow"
Actor (2009)

Boy

“Girls handbags have enough to make a survival kit for Antarctica.”

Chetan Bhagat book One Night @ the Call Center

Source: One Night @ the Call Center (2005), P. 82

“She (Monica Lewinsky) is the kinda girl who'll blow a guy and call you and tell you all about it.”

Kathy Griffin (1960) American actress and comedian

Hot Cup Of Talk (1998)

Guy

“I worked so hard to be so versatile in so many different things. There’s just not a lot of girls who can do ballet and flips and break dance and crazy hip-hop moves. So I would really encourage young dancers and actors to work to be as versatile as possible.”

Rachele Brooke Smith (1987) American actress

Exclusive Interview with Center Stage: On Pointe’s Rachele Brooke Smith http://talknerdywithus.com/2016/06/14/exclusive-interview-with-center-stage-on-pointes-rachele-brooke-smith/ (June 14, 2016)

Dance

“When I was a little girl (but being raised as a little boy), what I wanted more than anything was to be a dancer. How I longed for it — the lights, the stage, the gorgeous costumes, most of all for the delivering grace of movement in harmony with a choreography greater than myself. Like a little Chinese and two left feet saw to that: I was laughed, bullied, or shamed out of every dance class I attempted.”

Kai Cheng Thom (1991) writer

What I learned, loved and lost as a trans Zumba addict (2018)

Boy, Light, Dance

“Were we to still be circumcising the hood of the female clitoris, we would not have difficulty considering this a continuation of our tradition to keep girls sexually repressed. America’s reflexive continuation of [male] circumcision-without-research reflects the continuation of our tradition to desensitize boys to feelings of pain, to prepare them to question the disposability of their bodies no more than they would question the disposability of their foreskins.”

Warren Farrell book The Myth of Male Power

Source: The Myth of Male Power (1993), Part II: The Glass Cellars of the disposable sex, p. 223.

Pain, Feeling, Boy, Question

“Muhammad bin Tughlaq became notorious for enslaving women and his reputation in this regard spread far and wide. Ibn Battuta who visited India during his reign and stayed at the Court for a long time writes:
“At (one) time there arrived in Delhi some female infidel captives, ten of whom the Vazir sent to me. I gave one of them to the man who had brought them to me… My companion took three girls, and - I do not know what happened to the rest.” On the large scale distribution of girl slaves on the occasion of Muslim festivals like Id, he writes: “First of all, daughters of Kafir (Hindu) Rajas captured during the course of the year, come and sing and dance. Thereafter they are bestowed upon Amirs and important foreigners. After this daughters of other Kafirs dance and sing… The Sultan gives them to his brothers, relatives, sons of Maliks etc. On the second day the durbar is held in a similar fashion after Asr. Female singers are brought out… the Sultan distributes them among the Mameluke Amirs…” Thousands of non-Muslim women were distributed in the above manner in later years.”

Muhammad bin Tughluq (1290–1351) Turkic Sultan of Delhi

Ibn Battuta, 123. quoted from Lal, K. S. (1994). Muslim slave system in medieval India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 12

Women, Fashion, Singing, Time

“Teenage girls
with no life experiences
and boys who
call themselves punk
are on my radio
singing about
how much pain they've endured
and how hard
their lives are”

Damien Echols (1974)

Poem written on Death Row; from Arkansas Literary Forum, Volume 9 2007 http://www.wm3.org/live/thewm3/damien_details.php?id=30, as noted on the Free The West Memphis 3 web site. (url accessed on October 16, 2008).

Life, Pain, Boy, Singing

“First thing I remember when you came into my life
I said I wanna get that girl, no matter what I do
Well I guess I've been in love before and once or twice have been on the floor
But I've never loved no-one the way that I love you.”

Paul Simon (1941) American musician, songwriter and producer

Late in the Evening
Song lyrics, One-Trick Pony (1980)

Love, Life, Way

“I want to make sure I'm with a girl that's a good kisser, and that when I wake up, I have coffee and a cigarette. That's all I really want out of life. That, and world domination.”

Ryan Adams (1974) American alt-country/rock singer-songwriter

Rolling Stone (February 14, 2002)

Life, World, Coffee

“The backlash is not a conspiracy, with a council dispatching agents from some central control room, nor are the people who serve its ends often aware of their role; some even consider themselves feminists. For the most part, its workings are encoded and internalized, diffuse and chameleonic. Not all of the manifestations of the backlash are of equal weight or significance, either; some are mere ephemera, generated by a culture machine that is always scrounging for a “fresh” angle. Taken as a whole, however, these codes and cajolings, these whispers and threats and myths, move overwhelmingly in one direction: they try to push women back into their “acceptable” roles — whether as Daddy's girl or fluttery romantic, active nester or passive love object.”

Susan Faludi book Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women

Page 16.
Backlash (1992)

Love, Women, People, Parting

“One night, when all the thoughts were coming to me, the concept came to me that Superman could have a dual identity, and that in one of his identities he could be meek and mild, as I was, and wear glasses, the way I do. The heroine, who I figured would be some kind of girl reporter, would think he was some kind of worm; yet she would be crazy about this Superman character who could do all sorts of fabulous things. In fact, she was real wild about him, and a big inside joke was that the fellow she was crazy about was also the fellow whom she loathed.”

Jerry Siegel (1914–1996) American co-creator of Superman

In the beginning (1983)

Way, Thinking, Night

“[Medea] looked toward the gates and found him still even as he went; and alas! as he departed still comelier seemed the stranger to the lovelorn girl: such shoulders, such frame doth he leave to her remembrance.”
Respexit que fores et adhuc invenit euntem, visus et heu miserae tunc pulchrior hospes amanti discedens; tales umeros, ea terga relinquit.

Gaius Valerius Flaccus book Argonautica

Source: Argonautica, Book VII, Lines 106–108

“I suppose in John Kerry's world good diplomacy lets the boys in the bar finish raping the girl for fear of causing a fuss. Okay, that was unfair.”

Jonah Goldberg (1969) American political writer and pundit

October 8, 2004 http://web.archive.org/web/20001011/www.nationalreview.com/goldberg/goldberg200410080941.asp) 2000s, 2004

World, Fear, Boy

“Six-year-old girls in a place like Hyderabad did not play; tennis was a recreation like badminton or gardening. So I draw inspiration from my parents. Steffi Graf has always been my tennis idol; always Steffi Graf. Just the way she was and the way she carried herself on the court and off the court. She does inspire me today. Everyone asks me "Who is your favorite tennis player?" And I always say "Steffi Graf." I just cannot imagine anyone being better than her, you know? I think a lot of people love Steffi Graf for the way she was on and off the court.”

Sania Mirza (1986) Indian tennis player

Source: Tennis Week "The Tennis Week Interview: Sania Mirza"

Love, People, Way, Imagination

“I would not send a poor girl into the world, ignorant of the snares that beset her path; nor would I watch and guard her, till, deprived of self-respect and self-reliance, she lost the power or the will to watch and guard herself.”

Anne Brontë book The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Source: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848), Ch. III : A Controversy; Helen to Gilbert

World

““We’re in danger of losing the ship generation.”
“I’m aware of the problems,” she said. “‘You can’t tell the boys from the girls, they have no respect for their elders, their user interfaces are garish and unwieldy, everybody is writing a book, and their music is just noise.’ Found scratched on a potsherd in Sumer.””

Ken MacLeod book Learning the World

Source: Learning the World (2005), Chapter 15 “Hollow Spaces of the Forward Cone” (p. 248)

Books, Music, Boy, Problem

“It's a smile a girl could bring home to mother, if she had a mother; a smile a girl could pet like a pony, sip like a lemonade, hum like a popular tune; a smile a girl would feel safe with in a dark alley.”

Tom Robbins Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas

Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas (1994)

Smile, Feeling, Home

“When you are very young, you tend to accept standards for such momentous judgments as to whether a girl is beautiful; when you reach the age of experience you come to know beauty in the sense that “knowing” is to possess. Beauty does more than reflect light, it is the action of energy on form, glowing as a total function. This is singularly true of a grouse dog in his consecration to his bird.”

George Bird Evans (1906–1998) American writer

An Affair with Grouse (1982)

Age, Beauty, Dogs, Bird

““I really liked that girl.”
“Not loved, evidently,” I observed.
“N-n-no. I supposed not. Though what is love, anyway? Doesn’t it have so infinitely many kinds and degrees and mutations and quantum jumps that— Never mind.””

Poul Anderson book There Will Be Time

Source: There Will Be Time (1972), Chapter 8 (p. 83)

Love

“Girls can do anything. We do do anything and we expect to be treated as equals.”

Helen Clark (1950) 37th Prime Minister of New Zealand

Quoted in David Barber, Helen Clark, new chief of UN Development Programme," https://archive.is/20131125142737/www.monstersandcritics.com/news/asiapacific/news/article_1467092.php/PROFILE_Helen_Clark_new_chief_of_UN_Development_Programme_"PROFILE: Asia-Pacific News (26 March 2006)