Quotes about girls
page 21

Charles Krauthammer photo
Guy De Maupassant photo
Bill Gates photo
Chetan Bhagat photo
John Mayer photo

“Women are still a relative rarity in rock bands, and studies of women's experiences with pop and rock music have indicated that girls are socialized to pop and rock music differently from boys: boys and young men tend to learn songs by ear and talk about popular music's technical aspects, while girls and young women tend to focus on lyrics rather than on equipment and instrumentation, and to resist learning songs by ear. Miki Bernyi's experience testifies to the truthfulness of those findings:”

'Girls don't have the patience to spend six years learning someone else's music. Me and Emma [Anderson] can't jam because we only know how to play our own songs. Jamming's more of a boy's thing....I think that women play more imaginatively because they learn to play while they're writing songs, instead of waiting to be technically good first.'
Quoted in Evans, 1994, p. 44.

Victor Villaseñor photo
W.C. Fields photo

“I'd rather have two girls at twenty-one each, than one girl at forty-two.”

W.C. Fields (1880–1946) actor

You Can't Cheat an Honest Man (1940)

Brandon Boyd photo

“Girl, it's time we met and made a mess.”

Brandon Boyd (1976) American rock singer, writer and visual artist

Lyrics, Light Grenades (2006)

Toby Keith photo
William Gibson photo

“He found work.
He found a girl who called herself Michael.”

Neuromancer (1984)

Pete Doherty photo
Voltairine de Cleyre photo
Harry Chapin photo

“And the broad who served the whisky
She was a big old friendly girl.
And she tried to fight her empty nights
By smilin' at the world.”

Harry Chapin (1942–1981) American musician

Better Place to Be
Song lyrics, Sniper and Other Love Songs (1972)

Prince photo

“Here we are folks
The dream we all dream of
Boy versus girl in the World Series of love
Tell me, have U got the look?”

Prince (1958–2016) American pop, songwriter, musician and actor

U Got the Look
Song lyrics, Sign O' the Times (1987)

Jimmy Carter photo

“I have become convinced that the most serious and unaddressed worldwide challenge is the deprivation and abuse of women and girls, largely caused by a false interpretation of carefully selected religious texts and a growing tolerance of violence and warfare.”

Jimmy Carter (1924) American politician, 39th president of the United States (in office from 1977 to 1981)

A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence and Power (2014)
Post-Presidency

Bradley Joseph photo
Benjamin Franklin photo

“To find out a girl's faults, praise her to her girl friends.”

Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) American author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, inventor, civic activist, …

This has been widely attributed to Franklin since the 1940s, but is not found in any of his works. The language is not Franklin's, nor that of his time. It does paraphrase a portion of something he wrote in 1732 under the name Alice Addertongue:
If I have never heard Ill of some Person, I always impute it to defective Intelligence; for there are none without their Faults, no, not one. If she be a Woman, I take the first Opportunity to let all her Acquaintance know I have heard that one of the handsomest or best Men in Town has said something in Praise either of her Beauty, her Wit, her Virtue, or her good Management. If you know any thing of Humane Nature, you perceive that this naturally introduces a Conversation turning upon all her Failings, past, present, and to come.
Misattributed

Courtney Love photo

“I am the girl you know, can't look you in the eye
I am the girl you know so sick I cannot try
I am the one you want, can't look you in the eye
I am the girl you know, I lie and lie and lie”

Courtney Love (1964) American punk singer-songwriter, musician, actress, and artist

"Miss World"
Song lyrics, Live Through This (1994)

Guy De Maupassant photo
Ruhollah Khomeini photo

“If the religious leaders have influence, they will not permit girls and boys to wrestle together, as recently happened in Shiraz.”

Ruhollah Khomeini (1902–1989) Religious leader, politician

Denouncing the situation that sex segregation was not being imposed by the government. Speech number sixteen, Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting, World Service, October 26, 1964 http://www.irib.ir/worldservice/imam/speech/,
Islamic law

Rigoberto González photo
Jerome David Salinger photo
Rani Mukerji photo
Charlotte Perkins Gilman photo

“Where young boys plan for what they will achieve and attain, young girls plan for whom they will achieve and attain.”

Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935) American feminist, writer, commercial artist, lecturer and social reformer

Ch. 5 http://books.google.com/books?id=94EEAAAAYAAJ&q=%22achieve+and+attain+young+girls+plan+for+whom+they+will+achieve+and+attain%22&pg=PA87#v=onepage
Women and Economics (1898)

Derryn Hinch photo

“Recently, I was evicted of contempt of court over my online editorial about (bleep). I was sentenced to pay a $100,000 fine, or go to jail for 50 days. I believe this was the highest personal fine ever issued in Australia. Other websites, newspapers, and radio stations were not charged for similar or even more controversial material. Yet the judge attacked me for portraying myself as a scapegoat — a whipping boy — and he punished me accordingly. Now it is true, I have prior convictions. In 1987, I was fined $15,000 and jailed for exposing a paedophile priest Michael Glennon. Glennon had already been to jail for raping a 10-year-old girl, but was still running a camp for kids in country Victoria. And he was still a Catholic priest. He eventually went to jail, and he died behind bars several weeks ago. And to be honest, I feel good about that — he was an evil, evil man. I also spent five months under house arrest in 2011 for breaching court suppression orders, revealing the names of two serial sex offenders at a rally outside Victoria's Parliament House. About 4000 other people also shouted their names. That one cost me my radio job at 3AW. And I was fined and did 250 hours of community service for naming a judge who ruled that a man could not be charged for raping his wife under a 300-year-old British law. In Victoria, that law has since been changed. Now, here we go again. I have made a decision not taken lightly. On principle, I will not pay the $100,000 fine, which was due today. Instead, I'll go to jail. I'll go to jail for 50 days; to draw attention to all the suspended sentences for crimes of violence and child pornography; for the obscenely short sentences given to king hit killers; to draw attention to my campaign for a national register of convicted sex offenders. Already, 30,000 of you have signed up. I'm happy to serve just 50 days of the many years that the convicted paedophile ex-magistrate should be serving. That pervert, Simon Cooper, wasn't even put on the sex offenders register. If my going to jail draws attention to the judges and magistrates, out of touch with community expectations and your safety, then every one of my 50 days behind bars will be worth it. And so I'll go to jail.”

Derryn Hinch (1944) New Zealand–Australian media personality

Today Tonight, 16 January 2014.

Bruce Springsteen photo
Edward German photo
Ron White photo
Alicia Witt photo
Edwin Arlington Robinson photo
Björk photo
Stevie Nicks photo

“I look around at all the girl singers, and I think they're all my children… and they're all going to do this… And, yes, maybe I inspired them because I did get through a lot, and I did have the same problems that they're going to have. You do have to give up a lot for it.”

Stevie Nicks (1948) American singer and songwriter, member of Fleetwood Mac

Laura Furman, Rumours Exposed http://books.google.com/books?id=SW31aVVDc_AC (2003: Citadel Press), ISBN 9780806524726, p. 6

Jane Austen photo
Billy Joel photo
Christopher Titus photo
Susan Ann Sulley photo

“What better job is there for a 17-year-old girl than being in a pop group?”

Susan Ann Sulley (1963) British pop singer

When asked if she had considered staying at school and taking a better job in 1980
BBC Radio Tyne Interview with Yve Ngoo, 10 October 2004

Toby Keith photo
Hayley Jensen photo
Ernest Hemingway photo
Tyra Banks photo
Nguyễn Du photo
Katy Perry photo

“I kissed a girl and I liked it,
The taste of her cherry chap stick.
I kissed a girl just to try it,
I hope my boyfriend don't mind it.
It felt so wrong,
It felt so right,
Don't mean I'm in love tonight.
I kissed a girl and I liked it,
I liked it.”

Katy Perry (1984) American singer, songwriter and actress

I Kissed a Girl, written by Katy Perry, Lukasz Gottwald, Max Martin, and Cathy Dennis
Song lyrics, One of the Boys (2008)

Friedrich Engels photo

“We are now approaching a social revolution, in which the old economic foundations of monogamy will disappear just as surely as those of its complement, prostitution. Monogamy arose through the concentration of considerable wealth in one hand — a man's hand — and from the endeavor to bequeath this wealth to the children of this man to the exclusion of all others. This necessitated monogamy on the woman's, but not on the man's part. Hence this monogamy of women in no way hindered open or secret polygamy of men. Now, the impending social revolution will reduce this whole care of inheritance to a minimum by changing at least the overwhelming part of permanent and inheritable wealth—the means of production—into social property. Since monogamy was caused by economic conditions, will it disappear when these causes are abolished?
One might reply, not without reason: not only will it not disappear, but it will rather be perfectly realized. For with the transformation of the means of production into collective property, wagelabor will also disappear, and with it the proletariat and the necessity for a certain, statistically ascertainable number of women to surrender for money. Prostitution disappears and monogamy, instead of going out of existence, at last becomes a reality—for men also.
At all events, the situation will be very much changed for men. But also that of women, and of all women, will be considerably altered. With the transformation of the means of production into collective property the monogamous family ceases to be the economic unit of society. The private household changes to a social industry. The care and education of children become? a public matter. Society cares equally well for all children, legal or illegal. This removes the care about the "consequences" which now forms the essential social factor—moral and economic—hindering a girl to surrender unconditionally to the beloved man. Will not this be sufficient cause for a gradual rise of a more unconventional intercourse of the sexes and a more lenient public opinion regarding virgin honor and female shame? And finally, did we not see that in the modern world monogamy and prostitution, though antitheses, are inseparable and poles of the same social condition? Can prostitution disappear without engulfing at the same time monogamy?”

Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) German social scientist, author, political theorist, and philosopher

The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (1804) as translated by Ernest Untermann (1902); Full English text of The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1884/origin-family/index.htm - Full original-language German text of The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State http://www.mlwerke.de/me/me21/me21_025.htm

Tom Lehrer photo
Joyce Carol Oates photo
Phillip Abbott Luce photo
Hayley Williams photo

“"Boys! Hey boys out there: NEVER kiss a girl unless she says she… wants you to! Alright?!" "Never kiss a girl again. Unless she tells you she wants you to." (To the crowd, about a fan who just kissed her, and then to that boy)”

Hayley Williams (1988) American singer-songwriter and musician

Honda Civic Tour, Phoenix AZ, September 15th, 2010. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2bhqOIZkLk&feature=related

Michelle Obama photo
Hugh Laurie photo
Suze Robertson photo

“Yes, there was a lot of fuss about it, then [c. 1879-80].... [that] I also was permitted to enter the nude class [c. at the Art Academy in Rotterdam, evening classes! ].. that was never done before me by other ladies. I was the first who claimed it. And even in a local newspaper they cried shame about it: a young woman who painted nude model. And moreover.. a teacher with so many girls under her guidance.”

Suze Robertson (1855–1922) Dutch painter

at the Dutch Highschool
(version in original Dutch / origineel citaat van Suze Robertson:) Ja, dat is toen nog een heel ding geweest [c. 1879-80].. ..[dat] ik ook toegelaten werd tot de naaktklasse [c. op de Kunst-academie in Rotterdam, avondlessen!].. ..dat werd vóór mij nooit door dames gedaan. Ik was de eerste die er aanspraak op maakte. En tot zelfs in een plaatselijk blad werd er schande van gesproken: een jonge vrouw, die schilderde naar naakt model. En dan nog wel een lerares met zóóveel meisjes onder haar leiding. [op de Rotterdamse H.B.S.]
Source: 1900 - 1922, Onder de Menschen: Suze Robertson' (1912), p. 31

Chuck Palahniuk photo
Bruno Schulz photo
Michelle Obama photo
Dafydd ap Gwilym photo

“God is not so cruel as old men tell us: nor will God cut off the gentle soul of a man for loving a woman or a girl. Three things are loved by the whole world: women, fine weather, and good health, and girls are the fairest flower in Heaven next to God Himself.”

Dafydd ap Gwilym (1320–1380) Welsh poet

Nid ydyw Duw mor greulon
Ag y dywaid hen ddynion.
Ni chyll Duw enaid gŵr mwyn,
Er caru gwraig na morwyn.
Tripheth a gerir drwy'r byd:
Gwraig a hinon ac iechyd.
Merch sydd decaf blodeuyn
Yn y nef ond Duw ei hun.
"Y Bardd a'r Brawd Llwyd" (The Poet and the Grey Brother), line 37; translation from Dafydd ap Gwilym (trans. Nigel Heseltine) Twenty-Five Poems (Banbury: The Piers Press, 1968) p. 42.

Colleen Fitzpatrick photo
Daljit Nagra photo

“All the girls say they love me
all their mums say I'm lovely —
ever since I lived in the clouds.”

Daljit Nagra (1966) British poet, teacher and broadcaster

Poem: Raja's Love Song

James Kenneth Stephen photo
Bonnie-Jill Laflin photo
Irene Dunne photo

“Any young girl aspiring to a theatrical career held Florenz Ziegfeld in a awe.”

Irene Dunne (1898–1990) American actress

Hats, Hunches And Happiness (1945)

Francis Picabia photo

“Udnie – I see Again in Memory my Dear Udnie' is no more the portrait of a young girl than 'Edtaonisl' (counterpart of his work 'Udnie'] is the image of a prelate, as we ordinarily conceive of them. They are [both] memories of America, evocations of over there which, subtly set down like musical chords, become representative of an idea, a nostalgia, a fleeting impression.”

Francis Picabia (1879–1953) French painter and writer

'Udnie – I see Again in Memory my Dear Udnie' is the title of a painting, he made in 1913; a memory of the dances performed by Stasia Napierkowska on the ship to New York, to visit the w:Armory Show, where Picabia was presented in 1913 as a 'leading Cubist painter'
1910's
Source: 'Ecrits: vol. 1', 1913 - 1920, Picabia, Belfond, Paris, p. 26

Noel Coward photo
P.G. Wodehouse photo
Jello Biafra photo

“Most girls like play pretties, but you like guns, don’t you?
I don't care a thing in the world about guns. If I did I would have one that worked.”

Source: True Grit (1968), Chapter 7, p. 178 : exchange between 'Lucky Ned Pepper' and 'Mattie Ross'

AnnaSophia Robb photo
Laraine Day photo
Malala Yousafzai photo

“They support me and they are encouraging me to move forward and to continue my campaign for girls' education.”

Malala Yousafzai (1997) Pakistani children's education activist

BBC television interview, Oct 2013

Angelique Rockas photo

“As a little girl my mother used to take me with her to her fittings with her very expensive seamstress. I was dazzled by the beauty of the fabrics and the whole procedure. I still remember the feel of expensive taffeta.”

Angelique Rockas South African actress and founder of Internationalist Theatre, London

On the beauty of fabrics
Interview on Helenism .net (September 2011)

“But lo! the girl, like a frightened dove, that caught in the vast shadow of a hawk falls trembling on some man, no matter who he be, so doth she fling herself into his arms driven by strong fear.”
Ecce autem pavidae virgo de more columbae quae super ingenti circumdata praepetis umbra in quemcumque tremens hominem cadit, haud secus illa acta timore gravi mediam se misit.

Source: Argonautica, Book VIII, Lines 32–35

Halldór Laxness photo
Kakinomoto no Hitomaro photo

“The colored leaves
Have hidden the paths
On the autumn mountain.
How can I find my girl,
Wandering on ways I do not know?”

Kakinomoto no Hitomaro (662–710) Japanese poet

XXIII, p. 25
Kenneth Rexroth's translations, One Hundred Poems from the Japanese (1955)

Kathleen Hanna photo
Muhammad bin Tughluq photo

“All sultans were keen on making slaves, but Muhammad Tughlaq became notorious for enslaving people. He appears to have outstripped even Alauddin Khalji and his reputation in this regard spread far and wide. Shihabuddin Ahmad Abbas writes about him thus:
“The Sultan never ceases to show the greatest zeal in making war upon infidels… Everyday thousands of slaves are sold at a very low price, so great is the number of prisoners”. Muhammad Tughlaq did not only enslave people during campaigns, he was also very fond of purchasing and collecting foreign and Indian slaves. According to Ibn Battuta one of the reasons of estrangement between Muhammad Tughlaq and his father Ghiyasuddin Tughlaq, when Muhammad was still a prince, was his extravagance in purchasing slaves. Even as Sultan, he made extensive conquests. He subjugated the country as far as Dwarsamudra, Malabar, Kampil, Warangal, Lakhnauti, Satgaon, Sonargaon, Nagarkot and Sambhal to give only few prominent place-names. There were sixteen major rebellions in his reign which were ruthlessly suppressed. In all these conquests and rebellions, slaves were taken with great gusto. For example, in the year 1342 Halajun rose in rebellion in Lahore. He was aided by the Khokhar chief Kulchand. They were defeated. “About three hundred women of the rebels were taken captive, and sent to the fort of Gwalior where they were seen by Ibn Battutah.” Such was their influx that Ibn Battutah 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, but he was not satisfied. My companion took three young girls, and I do not know what happened to the rest.” Iltutmish, Muhammad Tughlaq and Firoz Tughlaq sent gifts of slaves to Khalifas outside India….. Ibn Battutah’s eye-witness account of the Sultan’s gifting captured slave girls to nobles or arranging their marriages with Muslims on a large scale on the occasion of the two Ids, corroborates the statement of Abbas. Ibn Battutah writes that during the celebrations in connection with the two Ids in the court of Muhammad bin Tughlaq, daughters of Hindu Rajas and those of commoners, captured during the course of the year were distributed among nobles, officers and important foreign slaves. “On the fourth day men slaves are married and on the fifth slave-girls. On the sixth day men and women slaves are married off.” This was all in accordance with the Islamic law. According to it, slaves cannot many on their own without the consent of their proprietors. The marriage of an infidel couple is not dissolved by their jointly embracing the faith. In the present case the slaves were probably already converted and their marriages performed with the initiative and permission the Sultan himself were valid. Thousands of non-Muslim women were captured by the Muslims in the yearly campaigns of Firoz Tughlaq, and under him the id celebrations were held on lines similar to those of his predecessor. In short, under the Tughlaqs the inflow of women captives never ceased.”

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

Lal, K. S. (1994). Muslim slave system in medieval India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 5 (quoting Masalik-ul-Absar, E.D., III, 580., Battutah)

Derren Brown photo

“Few things make me more livid than insulting bad theatre of any sort. Conversely, perfectly realised and exquisitely elegant performance can move me deeply and reduce me to sobbing like a big girl.”

Derren Brown (1971) British illusionist

Books, Absolute Magic - A Model for Powerful Close-Up Performance (2003) second edition

Dafydd ap Gwilym photo

“I am twisted with passion – plague on all the girls of the parish! since I suffered from trysts which went amiss, and could never win a single one of them, neither gentle hopeful maid, nor little lass, nor hag, nor wife.”

Dafydd ap Gwilym (1320–1380) Welsh poet

Plygu rhag llid yr ydwyf,
Pla ar holl ferched y plwyf!
Am na chefais, drais drawsoed,
Onaddun' yr un erioed
Na morwyn fwyn ofynaig,
Na merch fach, na gwrach, na gwraig.
"Merched Llanbadarn" (The Girls of Llanbadarn), line 1; translation from Kenneth Hurlstone Jackson (ed. and trans.) A Celtic Miscellany (Harmondsworth: Penguin, [1951] 1975) p. 209.

Aaliyah photo

“I breathe to perform, to entertain, I can’t imagine myself doing anything else. I’m just a really happy girl right now. I honestly love every aspect of this business. I really do. I feel very fulfilled and complete.”

Aaliyah (1979–2001) American singer, actress and model

In Vibe magazine cover story, "What Lies Beneath" (Published in 2001) http://www.vibe.com/article/aaliyahs-2001-vibe-cover-story-what-lies-beneath

Roger Ebert photo
Ronda Rousey photo
Roger Ebert photo
Brandon Boyd photo

“She is a girl so I wouldn’t slap her. I would lock her in a room full of spiders and let her think about what she’s doing to the youth of America.”

Brandon Boyd (1976) American rock singer, writer and visual artist

On what he would do if he met Britney Spears

Cat Stevens photo
Andrea Dworkin photo

“(On prostitution:) Incest is boot camp. Incest is where you send the girl to learn how to do it. So you don't, obviously, have to send her anywhere, she's already there and she's got nowhere else to go. She's trained. And the training is specific and it is important: not to have any real boundaries to her own body; to know that she's valued only for sex; to learn about men what the offender, the sex offender, is teaching her.”

Andrea Dworkin (1946–2005) Feminist writer

"Prostitution and Male Supremacy" http://www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/dworkin/MichLawJourI.html (1993), Michigan Journal of Gender and Law 1(1):1–12. Reprinted in Life and Death (1997), p 139–51.
Often paraphrased as "Incest is boot camp for prostitution".

“Sex is not necessary to make a movie sell. It's enough to have a pretty girl in the movie.”

Jamie Uys (1921–1996) South African film director

Sunday Times interview (1979)

Martial photo

“You ask what a nice girl will do? She won't give an inch, but she won't say no.”

IV, 71.
Epigrams (c. 80 – 104 AD)

Jayne Mansfield photo
Pete Doherty photo
Kakinomoto no Hitomaro photo

“In the empty mountains
The leaves of the bamboo grass
Rustle in the wind.
I think of a girl
Who is not here.”

Kakinomoto no Hitomaro (662–710) Japanese poet

XVII, p. 19
Kenneth Rexroth's translations, One Hundred Poems from the Japanese (1955)

Brad Paisley photo

“Now you're my whole life;
Now you're my whole world.
I just can't believe
The way I feel about you girl.
Like a river meets the sea,
Stronger than it's ever been.
We've come so far since that day,
And I thought I loved you then.”

Brad Paisley (1972) American country music singer

Then, written by Chris DuBois, Ashley Gorley, and Brad Paisley.
Song lyrics, American Saturday Night (2009)

Ernst Bloch photo
Rihanna photo

“While in America beautiful is skinny, in Barbados it's thick — girls with huge butts and nice curves.”

Rihanna (1988) Barbadian singer, songwriter, and actress

Allure magazine interview, January 2008.

Honoré de Balzac photo

“Girls brought up as you were, in a very strait-laced and puritan fashion, always pant for liberty and happiness, and the happiness they have never comes up to what they imagined. Those are the girls that make bad wives.”

Les filles élevées comme vous l'avez été, dans la contrainte et les pratiques religieuses, ont soif de la liberté, désirent le bonheur, et le bonheur dont elles jouissent n'est jamais aussi grand ni aussi beau que celui qu'elles ont rêvé. De pareilles filles font de mauvaises femmes.
Source: A Daughter of Eve (1839), Ch. 2: Sisterly Confidences.

Kazuo Ishiguro photo
Susannah Constantine photo

“I worked in Harrods as a sales girl and I was so lazy, I just sat on my arse all day. Now I have huge respect for shop girls. It was boring, so I tried to shoplift things, but we’d always get our bags checked.”

Susannah Constantine (1962) British fashion designer and journalist

As quoted in "Interrogation: Trinny & Susannah" in The Daily Mirror http://www.sundaymirror.co.uk/showbiz/celebsonsunday/interrogation/2007/09/16/interrogation-trinny-susannah-98487-19770870/ (16 September 2007)

William Faulkner photo