“She wore her sexuality with an older woman's ease, and not like an awkward purse, never knowing how to hold it, where to hang it, or when to just put it down.”

“A woman is like a teabag. You can't tell how strong she is until you put her in hot water.”

Nancy Pelosi (1940) American politician, first female Speaker of the House of Representatives, born 1940

“She was still there inside me now, just as she always was: a life put on hold, a memory I didn't know how to handle.”

Banana Yoshimoto book Hardboiled & Hard Luck

“Yet if a woman never lets herself go, how will she ever know how far she might have got? If she never takes off her high-heeled shoes, how will she ever know how far she could walk or how fast she could run?”

Germaine Greer (1939) Australian feminist author

“A woman is like a tea bag; you never know how strong she is until she gets into hot water. ”

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States

“They obeyed, as wise men do when a woman puts her foot down…”

Terry Pratchett book Nation

“If I hold her hand she says, ‘Don’t touch!’
If I hold her foot she says ‘Don’t touch!’
But when I hold her waist-beads she pretends not to know.”

Chinua Achebe book Things Fall Apart

“When a woman grabs my braids and says "How cute!" I crab her breast and say "How cute!" She never touches me again!”

Russell Means (1939–2012) Oglala Lakota activist for the rights of Native American people

“Not long ago a friend of mine opened the door of the garage at her summer cottage, and found a man inside who had hanged himself about two months before; what is more he had been cut down. She is deeply anxious to know (a) why he hanged himself; (b) if he hanged himself or was hanged; (c) who cut him down; (d) what it was about her garage that appealed to his morbid fancy. She will probably never know any of these things. It is thus that life falls short of the movies.”

Robertson Davies book The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks

“Every woman should have a purse of her own.”

Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906) American women's rights activist