Quotes about girls
page 24

Jay-Z photo

“They say you can't turn a bad girl good
But once a good girl's gone bad, she's gone forever”

Jay-Z (1969) American rapper, businessman, entrepreneur, record executive, songwriter, record producer and investor

Song Cry
The Blueprint (2001)

Agatha Christie photo
Eldon Hoke photo
Taylor Swift photo
Oksana Shachko photo
Michelle Obama photo
Jack McDevitt photo

“The earliest religious feeling MacAllister could recall was being annoyed at Adam, because it was his fault that girls subsequently had to wear clothes.”

Jack McDevitt (1935) American novelist, Short story writer

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Odyssey (2006), Chapter 7 (p. 66)

Jean Paul Sartre photo
Taylor Swift photo
Anita Sarkeesian photo
Andrea Dworkin photo
Katy Perry photo

“In another life, I would be your girl.
We'd keep all our promises,
Be us against the world.
In another life, I would make you stay,
So I don't have to say you were
The one that got away,
The one that got away.”

Katy Perry (1984) American singer, songwriter and actress

The One That Got Away, written by Katy Perry, Lukasz Gottwald, and Max Martin
Song lyrics, Teenage Dream (2010)

Keshub Chunder Sen photo
Toby Keith photo

“I run around with hillbilly girls
The weekend sits on my hillbilly world
You better be ready when the sun goes down
That's when country comes to town.”

Toby Keith (1961) American country music singer and actor

Country Comes to Town.
Song lyrics, How Do You Like Me Now?! (1999)

Alison Bechdel photo
Chelsea Handler photo
Jayne Mansfield photo

“I like being a pin-up girl. There's nothing wrong with it.”

Jayne Mansfield (1933–1967) American actress, singer, model

As quoted in The Sex Goddess in American Film, 1930-1965: Jean Harlow, Mae West, Lana Turner, and Jayne Mansfield (2009) by Jessica Hope Jordan

Slim Burna photo

“Dirty wind, I like the way you dey wind
And the way you dey do
You fit make Timaya go mad
So fine girl, pull down your skirt ah”

Slim Burna (1988) Nigerian singer and record producer

"Shokoto" (track 9)
I'm On Fire (2013)

Sarah Jessica Parker photo

“I just wasn't examined in the same way that a 'pretty girl' would be.”

Sarah Jessica Parker (1965) American actress

Interview for Allure magazine, February 2008
Context: For so long, I didn't play the object of attention or affection. It wasn't until L. A. Story that anyone cast me in a role that had my sexuality as a point of interest or focus or operation. I just wasn't examined in the same way that a 'pretty girl' would be.

“Sexist and racist economic policies in the United States such as a lack of educational opportunity for poor families and a lack of sustainable income from many jobs contribute to women’s and girls’ entry into prostitution.”

Melissa Farley (1942) American psychologist

Prostitution, Trafficking, and Cultural Amnesia (2006)
Context: Sexist and racist economic policies in the United States such as a lack of educational opportunity for poor families and a lack of sustainable income from many jobs contribute to women’s and girls’ entry into prostitution. The economic and legal vulnerability of undocumented immigrant women in the United States is exploited in prostitution/pornography.

Michelle Obama photo

“I am so tired of fear. And I don’t want my girls to live in a country, in a world, based on fear.”

Michelle Obama (1964) lawyer, writer, wife of Barack Obama and former First Lady of the United States

2000s, To Live Beyond Our Fear (2007)
Context: Barack and I talked long and hard about this decision. You know, this wasn’t an easy decision for us, because we’ve got two beautiful little girls, and we have a wonderful life, and everything was going fine. And there was nothing that would have been more disruptive than a decision to run for President of the United States.
And as more people talk to us about it, I mean the question came up again and again. What people were most concerned about: they were afraid. It was fear. Fear, again, raising its ugly head, in one of the most important decisions we would make. Fear; fear of everything. Fear that we might lose. Fear that he might get hurt. Fear that this would be ugly. Fear that it would hurt our family. Fear.
But you know, the reason why I said yes was because I was tired of being afraid. I am tired of living in a country where every decision that we’ve made over the last ten years wasn’t for something, but it was because people told us we had to fear something. We had to fear people who looked different from us. Fear people who believed in things that were different from us. Fear of one another right here in our own backyards.
I am so tired of fear. And I don’t want my girls to live in a country, in a world, based on fear.

Dalton Trumbo photo

“I think you're a goddamn fourflusher talking through your hat, and I've already decided that I like the liberty I've got right here. The liberty to walk and see and hear and talk and eat and sleep with my girl. I think I like that liberty better than fighting for a lot of things we won't get and ending up without any liberty at all.”

Johnny Got His Gun (1938)
Context: No sir, anybody who went out and got into the front line trenches to fight for liberty was a goddamn fool and the guy who got him there was a liar. Next time anybody came gabbling to him about liberty — what did he mean next time? There wasn't going to be any next time for him. But the hell with that. If there could be a next time and somebody said "let's fight for liberty", he would say mister my life is important. I'm not a fool and when I swap my life for liberty I've got to know in advance what liberty is, and whose idea of liberty we're talking about and just how much of that liberty we're going to have. And what's more mister — are you as much interested in liberty as you want me to be? And maybe too much liberty will be as bad as too little liberty and I think you're a goddamn fourflusher talking through your hat, and I've already decided that I like the liberty I've got right here. The liberty to walk and see and hear and talk and eat and sleep with my girl. I think I like that liberty better than fighting for a lot of things we won't get and ending up without any liberty at all. Ending up dead and rotting before my life is even begun good or ending up like a side of beef. Thank you mister. You fight for liberty. Me, I don't care for some.

Alastair Reynolds photo

“Nice girls don’t carry guns.”

Source: Century Rain (2004), Chapter 19 (p. 325)

Hermann Hesse photo

“Certainly you shouldn't go kill somebody or rape a girl, no! But you haven't reached the point where you can understand the actual meaning of "permitted" and "forbidden." You've only sensed part of the truth.”

Source: Demian (1919), p. 147
Context: Certainly you shouldn't go kill somebody or rape a girl, no! But you haven't reached the point where you can understand the actual meaning of "permitted" and "forbidden." You've only sensed part of the truth. You will feel the other part, too, you can depend on it. For instance, for about a year you have had to struggle with a drive that is stronger than any other and which is considered "forbidden." The Greeks and many other peoples, on the other hand, elevated this drive, made it divine and celebrated it in great feasts. What is forbidden, in other words, is not something eternal; it can change. Anyone can sleep with a woman as soon as he's been to a pastor with her and has married her, yet other races do it differently, even nowadays. Each of us has to find out for himself what is permitted and what is forbidden — forbidden for him. It's possible for one never to transgress a single law and still be a bastard. And vice versa. Actually it's only a question of convenience. Those who are too lazy and comfortable to think for themselves and be their own judges obey the laws. Others sense their own laws within them; things are forbidden to them that every honorable man will do any day in the year and other things are allowed to them that are generally despised. Each person must stand on his own feet.

Khaled Hosseini photo

“Laila: What girls?”

A Thousand Splendid Suns (2007)

Clifford D. Simak photo

“He had acted on an impulse, with no thought at all. The girl had asked protection and here she had protection, here nothing in the world ever could get at her.”

Source: Way Station (1963), Ch. 16
Context: He had acted on an impulse, with no thought at all. The girl had asked protection and here she had protection, here nothing in the world ever could get at her. But she was a human being and no human being, other than himself, should have ever crossed the threshold.
But it was done and there was no way to change it. Once across the threshold, there was no way to change it.

Alicia Witt photo

“I don't consider myself to be a quote-unquote "good girl". I'm not prim and proper and polite.”

Alicia Witt (1975) American actress

Filmcritic.com interview (2000)
Context: I don't consider myself to be a quote-unquote "good girl". I'm not prim and proper and polite. I'm very honest, and I love talking about sex, or people's deviances. I love psychology. I like listening to or talking about any personality traits that are unusual. That's what I like about acting.

Sophocles photo

“In bombers named for girls, we burned
The cities we had learned about in school —
Till our lives wore out; our bodies lay among
The people we had killed and never seen.”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

Losses (1948)
Context: We read our mail and counted up our missions —
In bombers named for girls, we burned
The cities we had learned about in school —
Till our lives wore out; our bodies lay among
The people we had killed and never seen.
When we lasted long enough they gave us medals;
When we died they said, "Our casualties were low."
They said, "Here are the maps"; we burned the cities.

"Losses," lines 21-28

Richard Nixon photo

“And our little girl — Tricia, the 6-year old — named it Checkers. And you know, the kids, like all kids, love the dog and I just want to say this right now, that regardless of what they say about it, we're gonna keep it.”

Richard Nixon (1913–1994) 37th President of the United States of America

1950s, Checkers speech (1952)
Context: p>That's what we have and that's what we owe. It isn't very much but Pat and I have the satisfaction that every dime that we've got is honestly ours. I should say this — that Pat doesn't have a mink coat. But she does have a respectable Republican cloth coat. And I always tell her that she'd look good in anything.One other thing I probably should tell you because if we don't they'll probably be saying this about me too, we did get something — a gift — after the election. A man down in Texas heard Pat on the radio mention the fact that our two youngsters would like to have a dog. And, believe it or not, the day before we left on this campaign trip we got a message from Union Station in Baltimore saying they had a package for us. We went down to get it. You know what it was. It was a little cocker spaniel dog in a crate that he'd sent all the way from Texas. Black and white spotted. And our little girl — Tricia, the 6-year old — named it Checkers. And you know, the kids, like all kids, love the dog and I just want to say this right now, that regardless of what they say about it, we're gonna keep it.</p

George Eliot photo

“Who that cares much to know the history of man, and how the mysterious mixture behaves under the varying experiments of Time, has not dwelt, at least briefly, on the life of Saint Theresa, has not smiled with some gentleness at the thought of the little girl walking forth one morning hand-in-hand with her still smaller brother, to go and seek martyrdom in the country of the Moors?”

Prelude
Middlemarch (1871)
Context: Who that cares much to know the history of man, and how the mysterious mixture behaves under the varying experiments of Time, has not dwelt, at least briefly, on the life of Saint Theresa, has not smiled with some gentleness at the thought of the little girl walking forth one morning hand-in-hand with her still smaller brother, to go and seek martyrdom in the country of the Moors? Out they toddled from rugged Avila, wide-eyed and helpless-looking as two fawns, but with human hearts, already beating to a national idea; until domestic reality met them in the shape of uncles, and turned them back from their great resolve. That child-pilgrimage was a fit beginning. Theresa's passionate, ideal nature demanded an epic life: what were many-volumed romances of chivalry and the social conquests of a brilliant girl to her? Her flame quickly burned up that light fuel; and, fed from within, soared after some illimitable satisfaction, some object which would never justify weariness, which would reconcile self-despair with the rapturous consciousness of life beyond self. She found her epos in the reform of a religious order.

William Dean Howells photo

“That's what is driving a girl like Margaret Vance, who has everything that the world can offer her young beauty, on to the work of a Sister of Charity among the poor and the dying.”

William Dean Howells (1837–1920) author, critic and playwright from the United States

A Hazard Of New Fortunes, Ch. XI
Context: The life of Christ, it wasn't only in healing the sick and going about to do good; it was suffering for the sins of others. That's as great a mystery as the mystery of death. Why should there be such a principle in the world? But it's been felt, and more or less dumbly, blindly recognized ever since Calvary. If we love mankind, pity them, we even wish to suffer for them. That's what has created the religious orders in all times--the brotherhoods and sisterhoods that belong to our day as much as to the mediaeval past. That's what is driving a girl like Margaret Vance, who has everything that the world can offer her young beauty, on to the work of a Sister of Charity among the poor and the dying.

James Branch Cabell photo

“He had a quiet way with the girls, and with the men a way of solemn, blinking simplicity which caused the more hasty in judgment to consider him a fool.”

Source: Figures of Earth (1921), Ch. I : How Manuel Left the Mire
Context: He had a quiet way with the girls, and with the men a way of solemn, blinking simplicity which caused the more hasty in judgment to consider him a fool. Then, too, young Manuel was very often detected smiling sleepily over nothing, and his gravest care in life appeared to be that figure which Manuel had made out of marsh clay from the pool of Haranton.
This figure he was continually reshaping and realtering. The figure stood upon the margin of the pool; and near by were two stones overgrown with moss, and supporting a cross of old worm-eaten wood, which commemorated what had been done there.

Kofi Annan photo

“Today, in Afghanistan, a girl will be born. Her mother will hold her and feed her, comfort her and care for her — just as any mother would anywhere in the world. In these most basic acts of human nature, humanity knows no divisions.”

Kofi Annan (1938–2018) 7th Secretary-General of the United Nations

Nobel lecture (2001)
Context: Today, in Afghanistan, a girl will be born. Her mother will hold her and feed her, comfort her and care for her — just as any mother would anywhere in the world. In these most basic acts of human nature, humanity knows no divisions. But to be born a girl in today's Afghanistan is to begin life centuries away from the prosperity that one small part of humanity has achieved. It is to live under conditions that many of us in this hall would consider inhuman.
I speak of a girl in Afghanistan, but I might equally well have mentioned a baby boy or girl in Sierra Leone. No one today is unaware of this divide between the world’s rich and poor. No one today can claim ignorance of the cost that this divide imposes on the poor and dispossessed who are no less deserving of human dignity, fundamental freedoms, security, food and education than any of us. The cost, however, is not borne by them alone. Ultimately, it is borne by all of us — North and South, rich and poor, men and women of all races and religions.
Today's real borders are not between nations, but between powerful and powerless, free and fettered, privileged and humiliated. Today, no walls can separate humanitarian or human rights crises in one part of the world from national security crises in another.

Guy De Maupassant photo

“The girl was one of those pretty and charming young creatures who sometimes are born, as if by a slip of fate, into a family of clerks.”

Guy De Maupassant (1850–1893) French writer

Variant translation:
She was one of those pretty and charming girls, born by a blunder of destiny in a family of employees. She had no dowry, no expectations, no means of being known, understood, loved, married by a man rich and distinguished; and she let them make a match for her with a little clerk in the Department of Education.
La Parure (The Necklace) (1884)
Context: The girl was one of those pretty and charming young creatures who sometimes are born, as if by a slip of fate, into a family of clerks. She had no dowry, no expectations, no way of being known, understood, loved, married by any rich and distinguished man; so she let herself be married to a little clerk of the Ministry of Public Instruction.

Saint Patrick photo

“Now you, Coroticus — and your gangsters, rebels all against Christ, now where do you see yourselves? You gave away girls like prizes: not yet women, but baptized. All for some petty temporal gain that will pass in the very next instant.”

Saint Patrick (385–461) 5th-century Romano-British Christian missionary and bishop in Ireland

Letter to the Soldiers of Coroticus (c.450?)
Context: Now you, Coroticus — and your gangsters, rebels all against Christ, now where do you see yourselves? You gave away girls like prizes: not yet women, but baptized. All for some petty temporal gain that will pass in the very next instant. "Like a cloud passes, or smoke blown in the wind," so will "sinners, who cheat, slip away from the face of the Lord. But the just will feast for sure" with Christ. "They will judge the nations" and unjust kings "they will lord over" for world after world. Amen.

Catherine Samba-Panza photo

“Girls have to get much more interested in public matters, in international matters, and [they must] affirm themselves by making frank, open, honest commitments in the area of the protection of women’s rights, in the area of politics and in all other sectors.”

Catherine Samba-Panza (1954) Central African politician

Sometimes when women are questioned on this or that subject, we are less informed than the boys.
2010s, 2016, Roundtable at GW (2016)
Source: As quoted on GWToday, "Leader of the Central African Republic in Roundtable at GW" https://gwtoday.gwu.edu/leader-central-african-republic-roundtable-gw, March 2, 2016.

Naomi Wolf photo

“What little girls learn is not the desire for the other, but the desire to be desired.”

Source: The Beauty Myth (1991), Chapter 5 : 'Sex', p. 157
Context: The books and films they see survey from the young boy's point of view his first touch of a girl's thighs, his first glimpse of her breasts. The girls sit listening, absorbing, their familiar breasts estranged as if they were not part of their bodies, their thighs crossed self-consciously, learning how to leave their bodies and watch them from the outside. Since their bodies are seen from the point of view of strangeness and desire, it is no wonder that what should be familiar, felt to be whole, becomes estranged and divided into parts. What little girls learn is not the desire for the other, but the desire to be desired. Girls learn to watch their sex along with the boys; that takes up the space that should be devoted to finding out about what they are wanting, and reading and writing about it, seeking it and getting it.

Jude Milhon photo

“Girls need modems!”

Jude Milhon (1939–2003) American hacker & author

Interview in Wired (1995)

Samuel Johnson photo

“Wretched un-idea'd girls.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

1752
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), Life of Johnson (Boswell)

Herbert Hoover photo

“You convey too great a compliment when you say that I have earned the right to the presidential nomination. No man can establish such an obligation upon any part of the American people. My country owes me no debt. It gave me, as it gives every boy and girl, a chance. It gave me schooling, independence of action, opportunity for service and honor.”

Herbert Hoover (1874–1964) 31st President of the United States of America

Letter to Senator George H. Moses, chairman of the Republican national convention, upon learning of his nomination for president (14 June 1928); reported in The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover (1952), volume 2, p. 195.
Context: You convey too great a compliment when you say that I have earned the right to the presidential nomination. No man can establish such an obligation upon any part of the American people. My country owes me no debt. It gave me, as it gives every boy and girl, a chance. It gave me schooling, independence of action, opportunity for service and honor. In no other land could a boy from a country village, without inheritance or influential friends, look forward with unbounded hope. My whole life has taught me what America means. I am indebted to my country beyond any human power to repay.

Kate Bush photo

“I won't open boxes
That I am told not to.
I'm not a Pandora.
I'm much more like
That girl in the mirror.”

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

Song lyrics, The Dreaming (1982)
Context: I won't open boxes
That I am told not to.
I'm not a Pandora.
I'm much more like
That girl in the mirror.
Between you and me
She don't stand a chance of getting anywhere at all.

Katie Melua photo

“She's the perfect good girl in the middle of the road.”

Katie Melua (1984) British singer-songwriter

Thea Gilmore

About
Context: [Melua] makes music that's easy on the ear and even easier on the brain. She's the perfect good girl in the middle of the road. I'm not keen to make things too easy for anyone.

James Branch Cabell photo

“The transfiguring touch was to come, it seemed from a girl's lips; but it had not; he kissed, and life remained uncharmed.”

Source: The Cream of the Jest (1917), Ch. 27 : Evolution of a Vestryman
Context: The transfiguring touch was to come, it seemed from a girl's lips; but it had not; he kissed, and life remained uncharmed.... at the bottom of his heart, he was still expecting the transfiguring touch to come, some day, from something he was to obtain or do, perhaps to-morrow.... Then he had by accident found out the sigil's power...

Ford Madox Ford photo

“To Leonora's eternal question he answered that all he desired in life was that — that he could pick himself together again and go on with his daily occupations if — the girl, being five thousand miles away, would continue to love him.”

Part Four, Ch. V (pp. 240-241)
The Good Soldier (1915)
Context: She asked him perpetually what he wanted. What did he want? What did he want? And all he ever answered was: "I have told you". He meant that he wanted the girl to go to her father in India as soon as her father should cable that he was ready to receive her. But just once he tripped up. To Leonora's eternal question he answered that all he desired in life was that — that he could pick himself together again and go on with his daily occupations if — the girl, being five thousand miles away, would continue to love him. He wanted nothing more, He prayed his God for nothing more. Well, he was a sentimentalist.

Jean-Luc Godard photo

“All you need for a movie is a gun and a girl.”

Jean-Luc Godard (1930) French-Swiss film director, screenwriter and film critic

Cited in: Jerry White, Two Bicycles: The Work of Jean-Luc Godard and Anne-Marie Miéville https://books.google.nl/books?id=QpXZAgAAQBAJ&pg=PT136&dq=%22All+you+need+for+a+movie+is+a+gun+and+a+girl%22&hl=nl&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjB-5vnrJ_LAhXCLQ8KHZ1yCTgQ6AEIHDAA#v=onepage&q=%22All%20you%20need%20for%20a%20movie%20is%20a%20gun%20and%20a%20girl%22&f=false, 2013
Source: Journal entry, May 16, 1991.

Germaine Greer photo

“A grown woman should not have to masquerade as a girl in order to remain in the land of the living.”

Germaine Greer (1939) Australian feminist author

Introduction
The Change: Women, Aging and the Menopause (1991)
Context: Women over fifty already form one of the largest groups in the population structure of the western world. As long as they like themselves, they will not be an oppressed minority. In order to like themselves they must reject trivialization by others of who and what they are. A grown woman should not have to masquerade as a girl in order to remain in the land of the living.

“U.S. prostitution can be understood in the context of the cultural normalization of prostitution as a glamorous and wealth-producing “job” for girls who lack emotional support, education, and employment opportunities.”

Melissa Farley (1942) American psychologist

Prostitution, Trafficking, and Cultural Amnesia (2006)
Context: U. S. prostitution can be understood in the context of the cultural normalization of prostitution as a glamorous and wealth-producing “job” for girls who lack emotional support, education, and employment opportunities. The sexual exploitation of children and women in prostitution is often indistinguishable from incest, intimate partner violence, and rape.

Philip José Farmer photo

“The little girl become a woman, dream-ridden Alice, had inspired the nonsense not really nonsense, and this in circuitous and spiralling fashion had inspired her to do what all others had failed to do, to save eighteen billion souls and the world.”

Philip José Farmer (1918–2009) American science fiction writer

Section 14 : "Three-Cornered Play : Caroll to Alice to Computer"
The Riverworld series, The Magic Labyrinth (1980)
Context: How strange and unforeseeable! The world had been saved, not by great rulers and statesmen, not by mystics and saints and prophets and messiahs, not by any of the holy scriptures, but by an introverted eccentric writer of mathematical texts and children's books and by the child who'd inspired him.
The little girl become a woman, dream-ridden Alice, had inspired the nonsense not really nonsense, and this in circuitous and spiralling fashion had inspired her to do what all others had failed to do, to save eighteen billion souls and the world.

Joss Whedon photo

“The first thing I ever thought of when I thought of Buffy, the movie, was the little…blonde girl who goes into a dark alley and gets killed, in every horror movie. The idea of Buffy was to subvert that idea, that image, and create someone who was a hero where she had always been a victim.”

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

Welcome to the Hellmouth (1997) DVD Commentary
Context: The first thing I ever thought of when I thought of Buffy, the movie, was the little... blonde girl who goes into a dark alley and gets killed, in every horror movie. The idea of Buffy was to subvert that idea, that image, and create someone who was a hero where she had always been a victim. That element of surprise … genre-busting is very much at the heart of both the movie and the series.

Wallace Stevens photo

“Violets, doves, girls, bees and hyacinths
Are inconstant objects of inconstant cause
In a universe of inconstancy.”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction (1942), It Must Change
Context: The bees came booming as if they had never gone,
As if hyacinths had never gone. We say
This changes and that changes. Thus the constant Violets, doves, girls, bees and hyacinths
Are inconstant objects of inconstant cause
In a universe of inconstancy. This meansNight-blue is an inconstant thing. The seraph
Is satyr in Saturn, according to his thoughts.

Richard Wright photo
KT Tunstall photo

“Her face is a map of the world
Is a map of the world
You can see she's a beautiful girl
She's a beautiful girl.”

KT Tunstall (1975) Scottish singer-songwriter and guitarist

"Suddenly I See".
Eye to the Telescope (2004)
Context: Her face is a map of the world
Is a map of the world
You can see she's a beautiful girl
She's a beautiful girl.
And everything around her is a silver pool of light
The people who surround her feel the benefit of it —
It makes you calm
She holds you captivated in her palm.

Paddy Chayefsky photo

“Well, all I know is I had a good time last night. I'm gonna have a good time tonight. If we have enough good times together, I'm gonna get down on my knees and I'm gonna beg that girl to marry me.”

Paddy Chayefsky (1923–1981) American playwright, screenwriter and novelist

Marty Pilletti.
Marty (1955)
Context: You don't like her. My mother don't like her. She's a dog and I'm a fat, ugly man. Well, all I know is I had a good time last night. I'm gonna have a good time tonight. If we have enough good times together, I'm gonna get down on my knees and I'm gonna beg that girl to marry me.

H.L. Mencken photo

“A policeman is a charlatan who offers, in return for obedience, to protect him (a) from his superiors, (b) from his equals, and (c) from himself. This last service, under democracy, is commonly the most esteemed of them all. In the United States, at least theoretically, it is the only thing that keeps ice-wagon drivers, Y.M.C.A. secretaries, insurance collectors and other such human camels from smoking opium, ruining themselves in the night clubs, and going to Palm Beach with Follies girls”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

1920s, Notes on Democracy (1926)
Context: What the common man longs for in this world, before and above all his other longings, is the simplest and most ignominious sort of peace: the peace of a trusty in a well-managed penitentiary. He is willing to sacrifice everything else to it. He puts it above his dignity and he puts it above his pride. Above all, he puts it above his liberty. The fact, perhaps, explains his veneration for policemen, in all the forms they take–his belief that there is a mysterious sanctity in law, however absurd it may be in fact.
A policeman is a charlatan who offers, in return for obedience, to protect him (a) from his superiors, (b) from his equals, and (c) from himself. This last service, under democracy, is commonly the most esteemed of them all. In the United States, at least theoretically, it is the only thing that keeps ice-wagon drivers, Y. M. C. A. secretaries, insurance collectors and other such human camels from smoking opium, ruining themselves in the night clubs, and going to Palm Beach with Follies girls... Under the pressure of fanaticism, and with the mob complacently applauding the show, democratic law tends more and more to be grounded upon the maxim that every citizen is, by nature, a traitor, a libertine, and a scoundrel. In order to dissuade him from his evil-doing the police power is extended until it surpasses anything ever heard of in the oriental monarchies of antiquity.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson photo

“I tried to be
what you wanted me to be
But you didn't want a girl you wanted
MACHINE …
I can't be part of this machine
I got too much heart to keep it in
I can't be part of your machine
I promise this is not the end”

Ysabella Brave (1979) American singer

"Machine (new original song by Ysabella Brave" (3 November 2007) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pc5qbh23MNY

Richard Wright photo

“In a drizzling rain,
In a flower shop’s doorway,
A girl sells herself”

Richard Wright (1908–1960) African-American writer

Haiku: This Other World (1998)

Alan Watts photo

“You can’t become a saint by taking dope, stealing your friends’ typewriters, giving girls chancres, not supporting your wife and children, and then reading St. John of the Cross.”

Kenneth Rexroth (1905–1982) American poet, writer, anarchist, academic and conscientious objector

Rothenberg and Antin interview (1958)
Context: You can’t become a saint by taking dope, stealing your friends’ typewriters, giving girls chancres, not supporting your wife and children, and then reading St. John of the Cross. All of that, when it’s happened before, has typified the collapse of civilization … and today the social fabric is falling apart so fast, it makes your head swim.

Richard Wright photo
Kid Cudi photo
Henry Fielding photo
John Amos Comenius photo
Elizabeth Taylor photo
Cornell Woolrich photo
Lucy Parsons photo
Jocelyn Bell Burnell photo

“The girls got sent to the domestic science room and the boys to the science lab. ... I protested — unsuccessfully.”

Jocelyn Bell Burnell (1943) British scientist

Reflections on women in science – diversity and discomfort: Jocelyn Bell Burnell at TEDxStormont, 4 April 2013 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jp7amRdr30Y,

Raquel Welch photo

“A lot of times I would play a lot of roles a man would play…In One Million Years B.C.—yes, the costume was revealing. But I was outdoors all the time, I was fighting to survive, there was a girlfight. I was participating, it was physical, and I was independent. I wasn’t that pushover kind of a girl. And I think that left an impression.”

Raquel Welch (1940–2023) American actress

On how she felt her roles were masculine in “Body of Work: Screen Siren Raquel Welch Gets Her Lincoln Center Retrospective” https://observer.com/2012/02/body-of-work-screen-siren-raquel-welch-gets-her-lincoln-center-retrospective/ in The Observer (2012 Feb 7)

Jaquira Díaz photo

“The world isn’t kind to black and brown girls, or black and brown women, especially when they come from working-class communities or from poverty. My girls taught me that it’s possible to make our own families, to find our families. They helped me believe in love and friendship and hope. But more than anything, after they had girls of their own, it was their girls who taught me the most important lessons: they helped me see the girl I was…”

Jaquira Díaz Puerto Rican writer

On the lessons her “home girls” taught her in “‘Either Hyper-Visible or Invisible’: An Interview with Jaquira Díaz” https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/either-hyper-visible-or-invisible-an-interview-with-jaquira-diaz/ in Los Angeles Review of Books (2019 Oct 29)

Daniel Abraham photo
Ahmed Shah Durrani photo

“Abdali’s soldiers would be paid 5 Rupees (a sizeable amount at the time) for every enemy head brought in. Every horseman had loaded up all his horses with the plundered property, and atop of it rode the girl-captives and the slaves. The severed heads were tied up in rugs like bundles of grain and placed on the heads of the captives…Then the heads were stuck upon lances and taken to the gate of the chief minister for payment.”

Ahmed Shah Durrani (1722–1772) founder of the Durrani Empire, considered founder of the state of Afghanistan

Tarikh-i-Alamgiri, Kazim 1865, https://books.google.co.in/books?id=lhUwDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA56&lpg=PA56&dq=Abdali%E2%80%99s+soldiers+would+be+paid+5+Rupees+(a+sizeable+amount+at+the+time)+for+every+enemy+head+brought+in.+Every+horseman+had+loaded+up+all+his+horses+with+the+plundered+property,+and+atop+of+it+rode+the+girl-captives+and+the+slaves.+The+severed+heads+were+tied+up+in+rugs+like+bundles+of+grain+and+placed+on+the+heads+of+the+captives%E2%80%A6Then+the+heads+were+stuck+upon+lances+and+taken+to+the+gate+of+the+chief+minister+for+payment.&source=bl&ots=A22xMHoI9O&sig=ACfU3U3cQpuPeB4cwY8beK1nWw8rvuBaHA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjQ4MzCnY3mAhXaZSsKHcPcBjQQ6AEwAnoECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=Abdali%E2%80%99s%20soldiers%20would%20be%20paid%205%20Rupees%20(a%20sizeable%20amount%20at%20the%20time)%20for%20every%20enemy%20head%20brought%20in.%20Every%20horseman%20had%20loaded%20up%20all%20his%20horses%20with%20the%20plundered%20property%2C%20and%20atop%20of%20it%20rode%20the%20girl-captives%20and%20the%20slaves.%20The%20severed%20heads%20were%20tied%20up%20in%20rugs%20like%20bundles%20of%20grain%20and%20placed%20on%20the%20heads%20of%20the%20captives%E2%80%A6Then%20the%20heads%20were%20stuck%20upon%20lances%20and%20taken%20to%20the%20gate%20of%20the%20chief%20minister%20for%20payment.&f=false

Awkwafina photo

“There is a duality between Awkwafina and Nora. Awkwafina is someone who never grew up, who never had to bear the brunt of all the insecurities and overthinking that come with adulthood. Awkwafina is the girl I was in high school – who did not give a shit. Nora is neurotic and an overthinker and could never perform in front of an audience of hecklers.”

Awkwafina (1988) actress and rapper from New York

On how her alter ego helps her cope with adulthood in “Awkwafina: ‘I was always the crazy one, the funny one. I’d do anything for a laugh’” https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/jun/17/awkwafina-oceans-8-youtube-crazy-funny-nora-lum in The Guardian (2018 Jun 17)

Charles Stross photo

“I have a feeling that a bored Ramona would be a very bad girl indeed, in a your-life-insurance-policy-just-expired kind of way.”

Source: The Laundry Files, The Jennifer Morgue (2006), Chapter 3, “Tangled Up in Grue” (p. 53)

Hillary Clinton photo
Mary McCarthy photo
Mary McCarthy photo
J. Howard Moore photo
Assata Shakur photo

“Imagine, ever since I was a little girl in Puerto Rico, I heard, oh, we don’t want to be like Haiti, we don’t want to be like Cuba. The fear was with being poor like Haiti and being poor like Cuba, and that’s why Puerto Rico never became free because it was afraid of being poor…”

Giannina Braschi (1953) Puerto Rican writer

On Puerto Rico in “A Graphic Revolution Talking Poetry & Politics with Giannina Braschi” https://www.academia.edu/36916781/A_Graphic_Revolution_Talking_Poetry_and_Politics_with_Giannina_Braschi in Chiricú Journal (2018)

Meghan, Duchess of Sussex photo
James Callaghan photo
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto photo
William Logan (author) photo
Rocco Siffredi photo
Jolin Tsai photo

“Because I have been exploring some social and mental phenomena related to females in recent years now I have a lot to say to girls.”

Jolin Tsai (1980) Taiwanese singer, songwriter, and actress

C-Pop Star Jolin Tsai on LGBTQ+ Representation in Her Music: 'I Am Just Following My Heart', Billboard, 2017-6-28 https://www.billboard.com/articles/news/pride/7849254/jolin-tsai-on-lgbtq-representation-in-her-music,

Ta-Nehisi Coates photo
Alberto Giacometti photo

“Whores are the most honest girls. They present the bill right away. The others hang on and never let go.”

Alberto Giacometti (1901–1966) Swiss sculptor and painter (1901-1966)

As cited in: Kay Larson, " The thin man https://books.google.nl/books?id=ZckBAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA70," New York Magazine, 7 October 1985, p. 70
Giacometti, 1985

Ryū Murakami photo
Sania Mirza photo

“She proves that young Muslim girls can make a mark if they are given the right chances… Many Muslims in India are economically and educationally backward; she has given the community new hope.”

Sania Mirza (1986) Indian tennis player

Akhtarul Wasey, director of the Zakir Husain Institute for Islamic Studies in Delhi
India's most wanted

Waheeda Rehman photo

“Everyone is born for something. This girl was born for the camera.”

Waheeda Rehman (1938) Indian actress

Quoted in "Guru Dutt was my mentor: Waheeda."

Rekha photo
Rukmini Devi Arundale photo