Quotes about women
page 9

“Men control the world, but women control the men.”

Sherry Argov (1977) American writer

Source: Why Men Love Bitches: From Doormat to Dreamgirl—A Woman's Guide to Holding Her Own in a Relationship

Men, World

“In my experience, men who understand women seem to rarely want to have anything to do with them.”

Khaled Hosseini book And the Mountains Echoed

Source: And the Mountains Echoed

Men, Understanding

“Besides, it happens fast for some people and slow for some, accidents or gravity, but we all end up mutilated. Most women know this feeling of being more and more invisible everyday.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Invisible Monsters

Source: Invisible Monsters

People, Feeling

“The waste of intelligence. A community that finds it natural to suffocate with the care of home and children so many women’s intellectual energies is its own enemy and doesn’t realize it.” I waited in silence”

Elena Ferrante (1943) Italian writer

Source: Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay

Children, Home, Intelligence, Communication

“Funny how women are ashamed of their inner fairy whereas men are forever proudly displaying their inner cowboy or fireman”

Dawn French (1957) English actress and comedian

Source: A Tiny Bit Marvellous

Men

“Each time a woman stands up for herself, without knowing it possibly, without claiming it, she stands up for all women.”

Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American author and poet

Time

“If there ever comes a time when the women of the world come together purely and simply for the benefit of mankind, it will be a force such as the world has never known.”

Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) English poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools

World, Time

“The surgeons' market is imaginary, since there is nothing wrong with women's faces or bodies that social change won't cure; so the surgeons depend for their income on warping female self-perception and multiplying female self-hatred.”

Naomi Wolf book The Beauty Myth

Source: The Beauty Myth

Change, Dependency

“Most men fear getting laughed at or humiliated by a romantic prospect while most women fear rape and death.”

Gavin de Becker (1954) American engineer

Source: The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us from Violence

Death, Men, Fear

“There are plenty of images of women in science fiction. There are hardly any women.”

Joanna Russ (1937–2011) American author

Science

“Word by word, the language of women so often begins with a whisper.”

Terry Tempest Williams (1955) American writer

Source: When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations on Voice

“Men learn to love the woman they are attracted to. Women learn to become attracted to the man they fall in love with.”

Woody Allen (1935) American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, author, playwright, and musician

Love, Men, Learning

“What Strider thinks of himself "He was too intense, too jaded, too warped and too… everything for most women to take for long. But so what. He was made of awesome. Anyone who couldn't see that wasn't smart enough to be with him, anyway.”

Gena Showalter (1975) American writer

Source: The Darkest Secret

Thinking

“God created men to test the souls of women.”

Robert A. Heinlein Job: A Comedy of Justice

Source: Job: A Comedy of Justice

Men, God, Soul

“The drama bug strikes hardest with Jews, homosexuals and plump women who wear their hair in bangs. These are people who, for one reason or another, desperately crave attention”

David Sedaris (1956) American author

People

“… most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution.”

Aldous Huxley book Brave New World

Source: Brave New World

Love, Men, Dreams

“Some things, when they change, never do return to the way they once were. Butterflies for instance, and women who've been in love with the wrong man too often.”

Alice Hoffman book Practical Magic

Source: Practical Magic

Love, Way, Change

“On one issue, at least, men and women agree: they both distrust women.”

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

Men

“if you think they didn't go crazy
in tiny rooms just like you're doing now without women without food without hope then you're not ready.”

Charles Bukowski book Love Is a Dog from Hell

Source: Love Is a Dog from Hell

Food, Hope, Thinking

“I do think that men can forget a lost love quickly. I know that women would find it much harder.”

Jane Austen book Persuasion

Source: Persuasion

Love, Men, Thinking, Forgetting

“I don't know who invented high heels, but all women owe him a lot.”

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

As quoted in Her Inspiration : Secrets to Help You Work Smart, Be Successful, and Have Fun (2008) by Mina Parker
Variant: I don't know who invented high heels, but all women owe him a lot.

For women

“No other group in America has so had their identity socialized out of existence as have black women… When black people are talked about the focus tends to be on black men; and when women are talked about the focus tends to be on white women.”

Bell Hooks book Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center

p. 12.
Source: Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center (1984), Chapter 1: Black Women: Shaping Feminist Theory, p. 13-14.
Context: Recent focus on the issue of racism has generated discourse but has had little impact on the behavior of white feminists towards black women. Often the white women who are busy publishing papers and books on "unlearning racism" remain patronizing and condescending when they relate to black women. This is not surprising given that frequently their discourse is aimed solely in the direction of a white audience and the focus solely on changing attitudes rather than addressing racism in a historical and political context. They make us the "objects" of their privileged discourse on race. As "objects," we remain unequals, inferiors. Even though they may be sincerely concerned about racism, their methodology suggests they are not yet free of the type of remain intact if they are to maintain their authoritative positions.
Context: Racist stereotypes of the strong, superhuman black woman are operative myths in the minds of many white women, allowing them to ignore the extent to which black women are likely to be victimized in this society and the role white women may play in the maintenance and perpetuation of that victimization.... By projecting onto black women a mythical power and strength, white women both promote a false image of themselves as powerless, passive victims and deflect attention away from their aggressiveness, their power, (however limited in a white supremacist, male-dominated state) their willingness to dominate and control others. These unacknowledged aspects of the social status of many white women prevent them from transcending racism and limit the scope of their understanding of women's overall social status in the United States. Privileged feminists have largely been unable to speak to, with, and for diverse groups of women because they either do not understand fully the inter-relatedness of sex, race, and focus on class and gender, they tend to dismiss race or they make a point of acknowledging that race is important and then proceed to offer an analysis in which race is not considered.

Men, People

“Lines don’t make beautiful women less beautiful”

Isabel Wolff

A Vintage Affair

Beauty

“No, women like you don't write. They carve onion sculptures and potato statues. They sit in dark corners and braid their hair in new shapes and twists in order to control the stiffness, the unruliness, the rebelliousness.”

Edwidge Danticat Krik? Krak!

Source: Krik? Krak!

“a man would know the women he was meant to be with because she made him weak. Till he claimed her and she made him strong.”

Kresley Cole American writer

Source: If You Deceive

Strong

“My argument is that history is made by men and women, just as it can also be unmade and rewritten, always with various silence and elisions, always with shapes imposed and disfigurements tolerated.”

Edward Said (1935–2003) Professor of English and literature

Men, History, Silence

“And the scary thing I have noticed is that some people really feel uncomfortable around women who don’t hate themselves. So that’s why you need to be a little bit brave.”

Mindy Kaling book Why Not Me?

Source: Why Not Me?

Hate, People, Feeling

“[W]hen I see men callously and cheerfully denying women the full use of their bodies, while insisting with sobs and howls on the satisfaction of their own, I simply can't find it heroic, or kind, or anything but pretty rotten and feeble.”

Dorothy L. Sayers (1893–1957) English crime writer, playwright, essayist and Christian writer

Source: The Letters of Dorothy L. Sayers. Vol. 1, 1899-1936: The Making of a Detective Novelist

Men

“No stories or explanations,' Finnikin had once told him. 'When it comes to women, straight into an apology and you will find the rest of your life bearable.”

Melina Marchetta (1965) Australian teen writer

Source: Froi of the Exiles

Life

“In the nineteeth century, knitting was prescribed to women as a cure for nervousness and hysteria. Many new knitters find this sort of hard to believe because, until you get good at it, knitting seems to cause those ailments..”

Stephanie Pearl-McPhee (1968) Canadian writer

Source: At Knit's End: Meditations for Women Who Knit Too Much

“Gods, I wish the world was full of passive women. He thought for a moment longer, then scowled. On second thoughts, what a nightmare that'd be. It's the job of a man to fan the spark into flames, not quench it…”

Steven Erikson book Memories of Ice

Source: Memories of Ice

God, World

“Women need a reason to have sex; men need only a place.”

Nelson DeMille book Wild Fire

Source: Wild Fire

Men, Sex

“I asked them why when they persecute men, for religion or colour it was seen by the world as oppression and when they persecute women, it was dismissed as tradition.”

Emer Martin (1968) Irish writer

Source: Baby Zero

Men, World, Religion

“My own definition is a feminist is a man or a woman who says, yes, there’s a problem with gender as it is today and we must fix it, we must do better. All of us, women and men, must do better.”

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie We Should All Be Feminists

Source: We Should All Be Feminists

Men, Problem

“What you see at fight club is a generation of men raised by women.”

Chuck Palahniuk Fight Club

Source: Fight Club

Men, Fight

“Peacocks have the bright feathers. Fish have the long tails. Women have the mall.”

Janette Rallison (1966) American writer

Source: My Double Life

Fish

“Men were put into the world to teach women the law of compromise.”

Jane Austen (1775–1817) English novelist

Men, World, Law

“Our world is fast succumbing to the activities of men and women who would stake the future of our species on beliefs that should not survive an elementary school education.”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

Source: The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason

Men, World, Education, School

“Women are more attuned to feelings than men are, and if they’re not being truthful, more often than not it’s because they think truth might hurt your feelings. But it doesn’t mean they don’t love you.”

Nicholas Sparks book At First Sight

Mayor Gherkin, Chapter 8, p. 120
Source: 2000s, At First Sight (2005)
Context: ... but what I eventually came to understand was that if a woman truly loves you, you can't always expect her to tell the truth. You see, women are more attuned to feelings than men are, and if they're not being truthful, more often than not it's because they think the truth might hurt your feelings. But it doesn't mean they don't love you.

Love, Men, Truth, Feeling

“There are two kinds of women--those who eat in a crisis and those who lose their appetite in a crisis.”

Emily Giffin (1972) American writer

Source: Baby Proof

“Is it too much to ask that women be spared the daily struggle for superhuman beauty in order to offer it to the caresses of a subhumanly ugly mate?”

Germaine Greer (1939) Australian feminist author

Beauty

“I’d thought I knew what beauty was in women; but she’d surpassed all the language I had for it.”

Anne Rice book The Queen of the Damned

Source: The Queen of the Damned

Beauty

“He dared to do what men and women don't even dare to think. And look what he's done already: he's torn open the sky, he's opened the way to another world. Who else has ever done that? Who else could think of it?”

Philip Pullman book The Subtle Knife

Source: The Subtle Knife

Men, World, Way, Thinking

“Regular women carry pictures of their babies, their husbands, their summer houses. Fat ladies carry pictures of themselves at their skinniest.”

Jennifer Weiner book Good in Bed

Source: Good in Bed

Summer, Baby, Housing

“Let us have wine and women, mirth and laughter, sermons and soda water the day after.”

George Gordon Byron (1788–1824) English poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement

Laughter, Water, Wine

“For men, I think, love is a thing formed of equal parts lust and astonishment. The astonishment part women understand. The lust part they only think they understand.”

Stephen King book Bag of Bones

Source: Bag of Bones

Love, Men, Understanding, Thinking

“Along with the 97 percent of women who can see, I have never been a fan of redheaded men.”

Chelsea Handler (1975) American comedian, actress, author and talk show host

Men

“For he was aware of the great secret of life: Women don't look for handsome men. Women look for men who have had beautiful women. Having an ugly mistress is therefore a fatal mistake.”

Milan Kundera book The Book of Laughter and Forgetting

Source: The Book of Laughter and Forgetting

Life, Men, Secret, Beauty

“Every woman should be told she's attractive. Men are seduced by their eyes, women by their ears." Saiman”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Bleeds

Men

“Men are cheaters.
Women are not to be trusted.
And most people are dumb.”

Jackie Collins (1937–2015) British-American novelist and writer

Source: Married Lovers

Men, People

“A mistake constantly made by those who should know better is to judge people of the past by our standards rather than their own. The only way men or women can be judged is against the canvas of their own time.”

Louis L'Amour (1908–1988) Novelist, short story writer

Source: Education of a Wandering Man (1989), Ch. 10

Men, People, Way, Time

“Families will not be broken. Curse and expel them, send their children wandering, drown them in floods and fires, and old women will make songs of all these sorrows and sit on the porch and sing them on mild evenings.”

Marilynne Robinson book Housekeeping

Source: Housekeeping

Children, Family, Singing

“I am convinced that the influence of an army of godly women will be incalculable--in our homes, our churches, and our culture. Will you be one of those women?”

Nancy Leigh DeMoss (1958) American radio host

Home

“How closely women clutch the very chains that bind them!”

Margaret Mitchell book Vom Winde verweht (1937 German edition)

Source: Gone with the Wind

“She was indeed a girl of exquisite beauty. She was one of those languid women made of dark honey smooth and sweet and terribly sticky.”

Patrick Süskind (1949) German writer and screenwriter

Source: Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

Beauty, Girl

“They’re not women’s clothes. They’re my clothes. I bought them.”

Eddie Izzard (1962) British stand-up comedian, actor and writer

Clothes

“The main difference between men and women is that men are lunatics and women are idiots.”

Rebecca West (1892–1983) British feminist and author

Men

“I believe in such cartography – to be marked by nature, not just label ourselves on a map like the names of rich men and women on buildings. We are communal histories, communal books…. All I desired was to walk upon such an earth that had no maps.”

Michael Ondaatje book The English Patient

Source: The English Patient

Men, Books, History, Communication

“Women don't realize how much store men set on the regularity of their habits. We absorb their comings and goings into our bodies, their rhythms into our bones.”

Louise Erdrich book The Round House

Source: The Round House

Men

“… One of the reasons so many women say "I'm not a feminist but…" (and then put forward a feminist position), is that in addition to being stereotyped as man-hating Amazons, feminists have also been cast as antifamily and antimotherhood.”

Susan J. Douglas (1950) writer

Hate

“Women do not become exhausted, they only exhaust others.”

Robert Jordan Lord of Chaos

Ogier saying
(15 October 1994)
Source: Lord of Chaos

“Women are amazing creatures-sweet, soft, gentle, and far more savage than we are.”

Robert A. Heinlein book The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

Source: The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

“Men don't rape women because their women are ugly," cousin Jostien said, but there was a protest at his words.

"That's what my fa said! He says that inside their hearts and spirits they are nothing but little men who need to feel powerful.”

Melina Marchetta (1965) Australian teen writer

Source: Froi of the Exiles

Men, Feeling, Heart

“Some women marry houses.”

Anne Sexton (1928–1974) poet from the United States

Housing

“I just think some women aren't made to be mothers. And some women aren't made to be daughters.”

Gillian Flynn book Sharp Objects

Source: Sharp Objects

Thinking, Daughters

“Isn't there a mirror someplace where you can go admire yourself?"
"I never knew a woman so hung up on my good looks."
"All your women are hung up on your good looks. They just pretend it's your personality.”

Susan Elizabeth Phillips (1948) American writer

Source: This Heart of Mine

Personality

“It appears that ordinary men take wives because possession is not possible without marriage, and that ordinary women accept husbands because marriage is not possible without possession”

Thomas Hardy book Far from the Madding Crowd

Source: Far from the Madding Crowd

Men, Marriage, Appearance

“I sometimes wonder if it is just me, or if there are other women who figure out where they are supposed to be by going nowhere.”

Jodi Picoult My Sister's Keeper

Source: My Sister's Keeper

“Women are weak, but mothers are strong.”

Julie Otsuka book The Buddha in the Attic

Source: The Buddha in the Attic

Strong

“Once you get a spice in your home, you have it forever. Women never throw out spices. The Egyptians were buried with their spices. I know which one I'm taking with me when I go.”

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…

Home

“There comes a turning point in intense physical struggle where one abandons oneself to a profligate usage of strength and bodily resource, ignoring the costs until the struggle is over. Women find this point in childbirth; men in battle.”

Diana Gabaldon book Outlander

Source: Outlander

Men

“The only way for a women to get my attention is to be you”

Sylvia Day (1973) American writer

Way

“I have met with women whom I really think would like to be married to a Poem and to be given away by a Novel.”

John Keats (1795–1821) English Romantic poet

Thinking

“Women. Can't live with 'em, can't shoot 'em.”

Steven Wright (1955) American actor and author

“Men think that self-sacrifice is the most charming of all the cardinal virtues for women, and in order to keep it in healthy working order, they make opportunities for its illustration as often as possible. I would fain teach women that self-development is a higher duty than self-sacrifice.”

Elizabeth Cady Stanton book The Woman's Bible

The Woman's Bible (1898)
Source: The Woman's Bible: A Classic Feminist Perspective

Men, Thinking

“Single women have a dreadful propensity for being poor, which is one very strong argument in favour of matrimony.”

Jane Austen (1775–1817) English novelist

Letter to Fanny Knight (1817-03-13) [Letters of Jane Austen -- Brabourne Edition]
Letters

Strong

“The old women only stuck around this long out of a sense of duty. Your mom was the same way. That's why I loved her. She put her duty first, ahead of evverything.”

Rick Riordan book The Son of Neptune

Source: The Son of Neptune

Love, Way, Moms, Sense

“Through the ingenuousness of her age beamed an ardent mind, a mind not of the women but of the poet; she did not please, she intoxicated.”

Alexandre Dumas (1802–1870) French writer and dramatist, father of the homonym writer and dramatist

Age

“Once upon a time, when women were birds, there was the simple understanding that to sing at dawn and to sing at dusk was to heal the world through joy. The birds still remember what we have forgotten, that the world is meant to be celebrated.”

Terry Tempest Williams (1955) American writer

Source: When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations on Voice

World, Understanding, Bird, Singing

“The point is not for women simply to take power out of men’s hands, since that wouldn’t change anything about the world. It’s a question precisely of destroying that notion of power.”

Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986) French writer, intellectual, existentialist philosopher, political activist, feminist, and social theorist

Men, World, Question, Change

“There is a resemblance between men and women, not a contrast. When a man begins to recognize his feeling, the two unite. When men accept the sensitive side of themselves, they come alive.”

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

Source: In Favor of the Sensitive Man and Other Essays

Men, Feeling

“It's me," said Jace. "Watching me play Scrabble is enough to make most women swoon. Imagine if I actually put in some effort.”

Cassandra Clare The City of Lost Souls

Variant: It’s me,” said Jace. “Watching me play Scrabble is enough to make most women swoon. Imagine if I actually put in some effort.
Source: City of Lost Souls

Imagination, Effort

“… well, if women's work was never done, why trouble about how much of it wasn't being accomplished at any given moment?”

Diana Gabaldon book The Fiery Cross

Source: The Fiery Cross

“Most young women do not welcome promiscuous advances. (Either that, or my luck's terrible.)”

Groucho Marx (1890–1977) American comedian

Source: Memoirs Of A Mangy Lover

“I think I would know Nora's fart anywhere. I think I could pick hers out in a roomful of farting women.”

James Joyce (1882–1941) Irish novelist and poet

Source: About his wife, Nora. Selected Letters of James Joyce. http://www.slate.com/id/2181165

Thinking

“Women don't have a sense of humor. They don't need one. The Almighty made them as a permanent joke on men. From which one may logically deduce tha the Almighty is a female.”

Loretta Chase book Lord of Scoundrels

Source: Lord of Scoundrels

Men, Sense

“I didn't know there were this many math guys," Hale said as they stepped onto the crowded concourse.
Kat cleared her throat.
"And women," he added. "Math women.”

Ally Carter book Heist Society

Source: Heist Society

Guy

“I envied these women I saw before me, their beauty still intact. Life has its revenge of life. Untimely death is the secret of eternal youth.”

Shan Sa book Empress

Source: Empress

Life, Death, Secret, Youth

“My brother, Jason, came into the bar, then, and sauntered over to give me a hug. He knows that women like a man who's good to his family and also kind to the disabled, so hugging me is a double whammy of recommendation.”

Charlaine Harris book Dead Until Dark

Source: Dead Until Dark

Family

“It is understandable that the perspectives of men and women on safety are so different--men and women live in different worlds… at core, men are afraid women will laugh at them, while at core, women are afraid men will kill them.”

Gavin de Becker (1954) American engineer

Source: The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us from Violence

Men, World, Understanding

“Ye always carry your women wi ye into battle, Ian Og. They're the root of your strength, man.”

Diana Gabaldon book Written in My Own Heart's Blood

Source: Written in My Own Heart's Blood

“I told you, computers are like women. If you shout at them or ask them to do too many things at once, they shut down and you won't even get a sniff" pg. 4”

Kim Harrison (1966) Pseudonym

Source: The Good, the Bad, and the Undead

“This is where men and women are different, we can put aside petty competition for relationships - they can't. It interferes.”

Adriana Trigiani (1970) American film director

Source: Viola in Reel Life

Men

“Anyone who says that women do not have influence in men's decisions makes a vast and stupid mistake.”

Lisa See book Snow Flower and the Secret Fan

Source: Snow Flower and the Secret Fan

Men, Stupidity, Decision

“But maybe boredom is erotic, when women do it, for men.”

Margaret Atwood book The Handmaid's Tale

Source: The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), Chapter 13
Source: The Handmaid's Tale
Context: These pictures were supposed to be erotic, and I thought they were, at the time; but I see now what they were really about. They were paintings about suspended animation; about waiting, about objects not in use. They were paintings about boredom. But maybe boredom is erotic, when women do it, for men.

Men