Quotes about women
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“Men like women who know how to be subtle.”

Source: True Believer

“I don't just use yarn from a store. I buy old sweaters from consignment shops. The older the better, and unravel them. There are countries of women in this scarf/shawl/blanket. Soon it will be big enough to keep me warm.”

Laurie Halse Anderson Wintergirls

Source: Wintergirls

Country

“I suggest to my students that they write under a pseudonym for a week. That allows young men to write as women, and women as men. It allows them a lot of freedom they don't have ordinarily.”

Joyce Carol Oates (1938) American author

Men, Freedom

“I hate men who are afraid of women's strength.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

Source: Henry and June: From "A Journal of Love"--The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin

Men, Hate

“The older I grow, the more I am convinced that there is no education which one can get from books and costly apparatus that is equal to that which can be gotten from contact with great men and women.”

Booker T. Washington (1856–1915) African-American educator, author, orator, and advisor

Men, Books, Education

“Now get some clothes on before the women around here are driven into a frenzy."
He gave me a mournful look. "I'm afraid that'll happen with or without clothes, my dear.”

Richelle Mead (1976) American writer

Source: Iron Crowned

Clothes

“Women are still in emotional bondage as long as we need to worry that we might have to make a choice between being heard and being loved.”

Marianne Williamson (1952) American writer

Source: A Woman's Worth

Love

“I like that people can just look at you and know that you are taken, that you are mine.” He closed his eyes and laughed. “And yes, I know that sentiment is at the top of the Women’s Liberation Movement’s list of things not to say to a modern woman.”

Patricia Briggs book River Marked

Source: River Marked

People

“To me, there's nothing on earth other than women. It's why I get out of bed every morning.”

James Ellroy (1948) Novelist, short story writer, essayist, memoirist

“When women are secret they are secret indeed; and more often then not they only begin to be secret with the advent of a second lover.”

Thomas Hardy book A Pair of Blue Eyes

Source: A Pair of Blue Eyes

Secret, Lovers

“Women have been repeating the same mistake since time began: falling for a man’s potential. We rarely see it the same way, and even more rarely care to achieve it.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: The Alpha Alternative: JZB Sex Scene

Way, Time

“Shopping is a woman thing. It's a contact sport like football. Women enjoy the scrimmage, the noisy crowds, the danger of being trampled to death, and the ecstasy of the purchase.”

Erma Bombeck (1927–1996) When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent le…

Death, Sport, Football

“I've mastered many things in my life. Navigating the strets of London, dancing the quadrille, the Japanese art of flower arranging, lying at charades, concealing a highly intoxicated state, delighting young women with my charms…”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Angel

Source: Clockwork Angel

Life, Art, Flowers, Lying

“Do you know how much women loathe it when guys think every show of negative emotion is tied to our menstrual cycle, like we're sheep or something?”

Laurie Halse Anderson (1961) American children's writer

Source: The Impossible Knife of Memory

Guy, Thinking

“He breathed out the bitter air that makes women doubt everything, and I breathed it in, as I had always done. I expelled my dust, the powder of everything I had destroyed with doubt, and he pulled it into his lungs.”

Miranda July (1974) American performance artist, musician and writer

Source: No One Belongs Here More Than You

“I began to like New York, the racy, adventurous feel of it at night, and the satisfaction that the constant flicker of men and women and machines gives to the restless eye.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby

Source: The Great Gatsby

Men, Feeling, Night

“I'll tell ye, Sassenach; if ever I feel the need to change my manner of employment, I dinna think I'll take up attacking women - it's a bloody hard way to make a living.”

Diana Gabaldon book Dragonfly in Amber

Source: Dragonfly in Amber

Way, Feeling, Thinking, Change

“Beautiful thoughts, and beautiful women never last.”

Charles Bukowski book Notes of a Dirty Old Man

Source: Notes of a Dirty Old Man

Beauty

“Women only nag when they feel unappreciated.”

Louis De Bernières (1954) English novelist

Source: Corelli's Mandolin

Feeling

“Pretty words, as pretty women, wrinkle up and die.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

“Punch a man on the nose, kick an old man downstairs, shoot somebody or any old thing like that, that’s my job. But argue with women in love—no thank you!”

Mikhail Bulgakov book The Master and Margarita

Source: The Master and Margarita

Love

“Besides, when I look around me at the men, I feel that God never meant us women to be too particular.”

Marie Jenney Howe (1870–1934) American writer

Source: An Anti-Suffrage Monologue

Men, God, Feeling

“I began to see why woman-haters could make such fools of women. Woman-haters were like gods: invulnerable and chock-full of power. They descended, and then they disappeared. You could never catch one.”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar (1963), Ch. 9

God, Fools

“Women? Women are like… thunderstorms. They're beautiful to look at, and sometimes they're nice to listen to-but most of the time they're just plain inconvenient.”

Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer

Source: The Final Empire

Beauty, Time

“Crooked cards and straight whiskey,
Slow horses and fast women.”

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

Horse

“Life is simple," I said. "Ale, women, sword, and reputation. Nothing else matters.”

Bernard Cornwell book The Pale Horseman

Source: The Pale Horseman

Life

“The desire to get married is a basic and primal instinct in women. It's followed by another basic and primal instinct: the desire to be single again.”

Nora Ephron (1941–2012) Film director, author screenwriter

“Men know that women are an overmatch for them, and therefore they choose the weakest or the most ignorant. If they did not think so, they never could be afraid of women knowing as much as themselves.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

Source: A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland and The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides

Men, Thinking

“Most women complain that there are no single, straight men left. I’d just like to meet one who’s human.”

Laurell K. Hamilton (1963) Novelist

Men

“To affirm that men and women are persons and as persons should be free, and yet to do nothing tangible to make this affirmation a reality, is a farce.”

Paulo Freire (1921–1997) educator and philosopher

Men, Reality, Personality

“I think, when men tell women to lose weight, it's a diversion from their own lack of size in certain areas.”

Candace Bushnell book Sex and the City

Source: Sex and the City

Men, Thinking

“Alice wonders if other women in the middle of the night have begun to resent their Formica.”

Barbara Kingsolver (1955) American author, poet and essayist

Night

“Oh, I forgot to mention it: My brother is the kind of man whom women stalk. In cooperative packs.”

Jim Butcher book Cold Days

Source: Cold Days

“The women one meets - what are they but books one has already read? You're a library of the unknown, the uncut. Upon my word I've a subscription.”

Henry James book The Wings of the Dove

Source: The Wings of the Dove

Books, Reading

“All through life there were distinctions - toilets for men, toilets for women; clothes for men, clothes for women - then, at the end, the graves are identical.”

Leila Aboulela (1964) writer, playwright

Source: Minaret

Life, Men, Clothes

“As Proust once said, classically beautiful women should be left to men without imagination.”

Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer

Source: Essays In Love

Men, Beauty, Imagination

“I'd much rather be a woman than a man. Women can cry, they can wear cute clothes, and they are the first to be rescued off of sinking ships.”

Gilda Radner (1946–1989) American comedian

Cute, Cry, Clothes

“Mrs. Ewing was a short woman who accepted the obligation borne by so many short women to make up in vivacity what they lack in number of inches from the ground.”

Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist

Source: Men, Women And Dogs

“Women won't have total equality until men can get pregnant.”

Diana Palmer (1946) American romance novelist

Men

“Avoid men who call you Baby, and women who have no friends, and dogs that scratch at their bellies and refuse to lie down at your feet. Wear dark glasses; bathe with lavender oil and cool fresh water. Seek shelter from the sun at noon.”

Alice Hoffman book Practical Magic

Source: Practical Magic

Men, Lie, Dogs, Water

“Miss," she gasped, and then her eyes went toWill. She clapped a hand over her mouth, turned, and bolted back into the house.
"Oh, dear," said Tessa.
"I have that effect on women," Will said.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Princess

Source: Clockwork Princess

Housing

“Why didn’t you talk about whether women are funny or not?

I just felt that by commenting on that in any real way, it would be tacit approval of it as a legitimate debate, which it isn’t.”

Mindy Kaling book Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

Source: Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

Way

“Some women attract desire. Others do not.”

Philippa Gregory book The Other Boleyn Girl

Source: The Other Boleyn Girl

“That's when it struck me: how gorgeous we all were, even with cellulite (saw a lot of that) and stretch marks, scars and tattoos. Let me just say this, not single body was perfect, not even the fittest of women there.”

Justina Chen (1968) American writer

Source: North of Beautiful

Tattoo, Perfection

“Women scheme when they are weak, they lie out of fear. Men scheme when they are strong, they lie out of arrogance.”

Julian Barnes book Flaubert's Parrot

Source: Flaubert's Parrot

Men, Lie, Fear, Strong

“Women always put men first. That's how everything got so screwed up.”

Janet Fitch book White Oleander

Source: White Oleander

Men

“Men make angry music and it's called rock-and-roll; women include anger in their vocabulary and suddenly they're angry and militant.”

Ani DiFranco (1970) musician and activist

Men, Music, Anger

“Violent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism and tribalism and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry, contemptuous of women and coercive toward children: organized religion ought to have a great deal on its conscience.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

Source: god is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything

Hostility, Children, Religion

“What I don't understand is how women can pour hot wax on their bodies, let it dry, then rip out every single hair by its root and still be scared of spiders.”

Jerry Seinfeld (1954) American comedian and actor

I'm Telling You for the Last Time (1998)
Context: Men and women will never understand each other; my advice is to just stop trying. Just forget it. I know I will never understand women. I will never understand how you can take boiling hot wax, pour it onto your upper thigh, rip the hair out by the root... and still be afraid of a spider.

Understanding

“Allegra's Austen wrote about the impact of financial need on the intimate lives of women. If she'd worked in a bookstore, Allegra would have shelved Austen in the horror section.”

Karen Joy Fowler The Jane Austen Book Club

Source: The Jane Austen Book Club

“There’ll always be wars because men love wars. Women don’t, but men do..”

Margaret Mitchell book Vom Winde verweht (1937 German edition)

Source: Gone with the Wind

Love, Men, War

“Women shouldn't iron, ever. It's our wrinkles that make us interesting.”

Lisa Scottoline (1955) American writer

Source: Why My Third Husband Will Be a Dog: The Amazing Adventures of an Ordinary Woman

“CNN found that Hillary Clinton is the most admired woman in America. Women admire her because she's strong and successful. Men admire her because she allows her husband to cheat and get away with it.”

Jay Leno (1950) American comedian, actor, writer, producer, voice actor and television host

Men, Strong, Success, Cheating

“we are the women our parents warned us against, and we are proud”

Gloria Steinem (1934) American feminist and journalist

Parent

“The world will know and understand me someday. But if that day does not arrive, it does not greatly matter. I shall have opened the way for other women.”

George Sand (1804–1876) French novelist and memoirist; pseudonym of Lucile Aurore Dupin

World, Way, Understanding

“The great motherhood friendships are the ones in which two women can admit [how difficult mothering is] quietly to each other, over cups of tea at a table sticky with spilled apple juice and littered with markers without tops.”

Anna Quindlen (1952) journalist, Novelist

Friendship, Tea

“To a philosopher all news is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women over their tea.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

Reading, Tea

“It's not true that I had nothing on. I had the radio on.”

Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962) American actress, model, and singer

As quoted in TIME magazine when "asked if she really had nothing on in the photograph [for a 1949 calendar]" ("Something for the Boys." Time 60, no. 6 (August 11, 1952): 90)
Variant: I had the radio on.

Funny