Quotes about female
page 2

“The kiss originated when the first male reptile licked the first female reptile, implying in a subtle way that she was as succulent as the small reptile he had for dinner the night before.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter

Way, Kiss, Night

“I'm not sure I even need a lover, male or female. Sometimes I think I'd settle for five good friends.”

Armistead Maupin (1944) American writer

Source: 28 Barbary Lane: The Tales of the City Omnibus

Lovers, Thinking

“The Brotherhood was strong, a unit. a powerful force in their world for good. And so too were the females. Strong. A unit. A powerful force for good in their world.”

Jessica Bird book Lover Revealed

Source: Lover Revealed

World, Strong

“Exotic: meaning you're "desired."
For madness is seductive, sexy. Female madness.
So long as the female is reasonably young and attractive.”

Joyce Carol Oates Blonde

Source: Blonde

Madness

“Readers understand that the books celebrate female power. In the romance novel, the woman always wins. With courage, intelligence and gentleness she brings the most dangerous creature on the earth, the human male, to his knees.”

Jayne Ann Krentz (1948) American novelist

Books, Intelligence, Courage, Understanding

“Power is neither male or female.”

Michael Crichton (1942–2008) American author, screenwriter, film producer

Source: Disclosure

“I find it impossible to experience either pride or shame over accidents of genetics in which I had no active part. I'm not necessarily proud to be female. I am not even proud to be human—I only love to be so.”

Zadie Smith (1975) British writer

Love, Parting

“But it is Bella, not the supernaturals she falls in with, who is the true horror show here, at least as a female role model.”

Peggy Orenstein (1961) American writer

Source: Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Frontlines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture

“You assume that it has to be a male god who finds a human female attractive? How sexist is that?”

Rick Riordan book The Lightning Thief

Source: The Lightning Thief

God

“as females in a patriarchal culture, we were not slaves of love; most of us were and are slaves of longing-- yearning for a master who will set us free and claim us because we cannot claim ourselves”

Bell Hooks (1952) American author, feminist, and social activist

Love

“Biologically speaking, if something bites you, it is more likely to be female.”

Desmond Morris (1928) English zoologist, ethologist and surrealist painter

Funny

“It was futile to attack with reason the stout wall of irrational feelings that, as is known, is the stuff of which the female mind is made.”

Milan Kundera book Laughable Loves

Source: Laughable Loves

Feeling

“Yeah.” Rhage sighed. “All I want is one good female. But I guess I’ll settle for quantity until I find her. Life just sucks, doesn’t it?”

Jessica Bird book Dark Lover

Source: Dark Lover

Life

“And speaking of females, if I call you by one's name while my fangs are plunged deep in your neck, just run with it.”

Kresley Cole American writer

Source: Dreams of a Dark Warrior

“As far as he was concerned, there were only two good positions for a human. A female on her back. And a male facedown not breathing.”

Jessica Bird book Dark Lover

Source: Dark Lover

“Piper!” Frank yelled. “Counter those empousai! We need some chaos.”

“Thought you’d never ask.” She started catcalling at the female demons: “Your makeup is smeared! Your friend called you ugly! That one is making a face behind your back!”

Rick Riordan (1964) American writer

“Do you honestly want credit because you didn’t do anything to a helpless female?”
“No! Yes. No, damn it—”

Kresley Cole American writer

Source: Dark Desires After Dusk

“Are you a female dog?"
"What?" Massie asked. "Why?"
"Because you are acting like a real”

Lisi Harrison book The Clique

Source: The Clique

Dogs

“I think I may boast myself to be, with all possible vanity, the most unlearned and uninformed female who ever dared to be an authoress.”

Jane Austen (1775–1817) English novelist

Letter to Mr. Clarke, librarian to the Prince Regent (1815-12-11) [Letters of Jane Austen -- Brabourne Edition]
Letters
Context: I am quite honoured by your thinking me capable of drawing such a clergyman as you gave the sketch of in your note of Nov. 16th. But I assure you I am not. The comic part of the character I might be equal to, but not the good, the enthusiastic, the literary. Such a man's conversation must at times be on subjects of science and philosophy, of which I know nothing; or at least be occasionally abundant in quotations and allusions which a woman who, like me, knows only her own mother-tongue, and has read little in that, would be totally without the power of giving. A classical education, or at any rate a very extensive acquaintance with English literature, ancient and modern, appears to me quite indispensable for the person who would do any justice to your clergyman; and I think I may boast myself to be, with all possible vanity, the most unlearned and uninformed female who ever dared to be an authoress.

Thinking

“It is a well-documented fact that guys will not ask for directions. This is a biological thing. This is why it takes several million sperm cells… to locate a female egg, despite the fact that the egg is, relative to them, the size of Wisconsin.”

Dave Barry (1947) American writer

Guy

“Why does it take girls so long to shower?” he demanded. “Mortal girls, Shadowhunters, female warlocks, you‘re all the same. I‘m not getting any younger waiting out here.”
-Magnus to Clary, pg.272-”

Cassandra Clare book City of Ashes

Source: City of Ashes

Girl, Waiting

“Human females, they're kind of crazy during this time aren't they?

If you chose to believe the stories written by male writers.

They heard a bang and thump from the kitchen. Followed by Meg yelling at something.

That many males can't be wrong.”

Anne Bishop book Murder of Crows

Source: Murder of Crows

Time

“No man of any intelligence would pretend to know a female mind.”

Julia Quinn (1970) American novelist

Source: When He Was Wicked

Intelligence

“I do not scruple to employ mendacity and a fictitious appearance of female incompetence when the occasion demands it.”

Elizabeth Peters (1927–2013) American author and egyptologist

Appearance

“Being the boss anywhere is lonely. Being a female boss in a world of mostly men is especially so.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

Men, World

“Do not consider me now as an elegant female intending to plague you, but as a rational creature speaking the truth from her heart.”

Jane Austen book Pride and Prejudice

Source: Pride and Prejudice

Truth, Heart

“Look, Mother, I am never going to be thin.
I'm Norwegian. If you wanted a thin daughter, you should not have married a man whose female ancestors carried cows home from the pasture”

Jennifer Crusie book Bet Me

Source: Bet Me

Home, Daughters

“Roman might have survived the Great Vampire War of 1710, but he was about to face an even worse terror.
A mortal female in full rage.”

Kerrelyn Sparks (1955) American writer

Source: How to Marry a Millionaire Vampire

War, Rage

“„You,” the female on the bed said, her timbre shaded with irrittion. „New guy. Angel Boy. Colonel Curls, or whatever you want to be called. I'm done asking, so now I'm commanding. Free me.”

Gena Showalter (1975) American writer

Source: Wicked Nights

Angels, Guy, Boy

“Where is Barbie?"
The female shifter snickered and choked it off.
"Is there a stripper pole?”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Bleeds

“A male usually had made up his mind before you began to talk to him -so why bother?- but a female, because her mind was more supple, was always prepared to become more disappointed in you than she had yet suspected possible.”

Gregory Maguire book A Lion Among Men

Source: A Lion Among Men

Disappointment

“Then I get it, what it means. At least, for me. District 12 only has three existing victors to choose from. Two male. One female…
I am going back into the arena.”

Suzanne Collins book Catching Fire

Source: Catching Fire

“She wanted to feel safe. Untouchable in her home. The ultimate female fantasy.”

Kathy Reichs book Déjà Dead

Source: Déjà Dead

Feeling, Home

“And mortal terror in a female was Z's favorite turn-on. He got off on it like most males favored crap from Victoria's Secret.”

Jessica Bird book Dark Lover

Source: Dark Lover

Secret

“In the end anti-black, anti-female, and all forms of discrimination are equivalent to the same thing: anti-humanism.”

Shirley Chisholm (1924–2005) American politician

“And certainly, the mistakes that we male and female mortals make when we have our own way might fairly raise some wonder that we are so fond of it.”

George Eliot book Middlemarch

Source: Middlemarch

Way

“There was a pause, static, a muttered "Give me that," by an indignant female. Then the normally quiet reserved Ashlyn was demanding, "Did you just drunk dial my husband?"
"Yes, ma'am," Strider said, and the other two finally burst into laughter.”

Gena Showalter (1975) American writer

Source: The Darkest Secret

Laughter

“My favorite sport is female and my favorite food is beer.”

Glen Cook Cold Copper Tears

Source: Cold Copper Tears

Food, Beer, Sport

“…women were brought up to have only one set of manners. A woman was either a lady or she wasn't, and we all know what the latter meant. Not even momentary lapses were allowed; there is no female equivalent of the boys-will-be-boys concept.”

Judith Martin (1938) American etiquette expert

Source: Common Courtesy: In Which Miss Manners Solves the Problem That Baffled Mr. Jefferson

Women, Boy

“Moreover, I wish to assure you both that I did not make any amorous advances on female monkeys.”

Cassandra Clare The Bane Chronicles

Giulana and Magnus Bane in 1791, p. 13.
Source: The Bane Chronicles, What Really Happened in Peru (2013)
Context: "But of course you should have retreated at once from the dominant male. Are you an idiot? You are extremely lucky he was distracted from ripping out your throat by the fruit. He thought you were trying to steal his females."
"Pardon me, but we did not have the time to exchange that kind of personal information. I could not have known! Moreover, I wish to assure both of you that I did not make any amorous advances on female monkeys. [... ] I didn't actually see any, so I didn't get the chance."

“You cannot help being a female, and I should be something of a fool were I to discount your talents merely because of their housing.”

Laurie R. King book The Beekeeper's Apprentice

Source: The Beekeeper's Apprentice

Fools, Help, Housing

“Women are all female impersonators to some degree.”

Susan Brownmiller (1935) American journalist and activist

Women

“Q: So, why do you write these strong female characters?
A: Because you’re still asking me that question.”

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

"American Rhetoric: Joss Whedon - Equality Now Address" (15 May 2006) http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/josswhedonequalitynow.htm

Question, Strong

“Unaffected modesty is the sweetest charm of female excellence, the richest gem in the diadem of her honor.”

Noah Webster (1758–1843) lexicographer, textbook pioneer, English-language spelling reformer, writer, editor and author

“He knew he was being overbearing as hell, but he couldn't help it. He was a bonded male. With his pregnant female. There were few things on the planet more aggressive or dangerous. And those bastards were called hurricanes and tornadoes.”

Jessica Bird (1969) U.S. novelist

Source: Lover Awakened

Hell, Help

“Why couldn’t they just give the human female a bag of money and then pee on the building so that everyone would know it was theirs?”

Anne Bishop book Vision in Silver

Source: Vision in Silver

Money

“It’s a very female thing, isn’t it, to take one boys’ night and snowball it into a marital infidelity that will destroy our marriage?”

Gillian Flynn book Gone Girl

Source: Gone Girl

Marriage, Boy, Night

“Nothing indicts female allegiance to patriarchy more than the willingness to behave as though the problems created by cultural investment in sexist thinking about the nature of male and female roles can be solved by women's working harder.”

Bell Hooks (1952) American author, feminist, and social activist

Source: Communion: The Female Search for Love

Women, Nature, Problem, Thinking

“We live in a world which worships the unreal female body and despises real female power. In this culture, where women are commanded to always look available nut never actually be so, where, where we are obliged to appear socially and sexually consumable whilst consuming as little as possible, our most drastic retaliation is to undertake our own consumption: to consume ourselves - and so we do in ever increasing numbers.”

Laurie Penny book Meat Market: Female Flesh Under Capitalism

Source: Meat Market: Female Flesh Under Capitalism (2010), Chapter 2

Women, World, Appearance

“After that searing meeting with those female soldiers I was even more determined that I was going to achieve real change in our culture.”

David Morrison (1956) Australian army general

Address at the International Women's Day Conference (2013)

Change

“As the art historian Emily Braun has documented, Klimt read Darwin and became fascinated with the structure of the cell… Thus, the small iconographic images on Adelle's dress are not simply decorative… they are symbols of male and female cells: rectangular sperm and ovoid eggs. …designed to match the sitter's seductive face and her full-blown reproductive capacities.”

Eric R. Kandel (1929) American neuropsychiatrist

The Age of Insight (2012)

Art, Reading

“Patriotism in the female s*x is the most disinterested of all virtues. Excluded from honors and from offices, we cannot attach ourselves to the State or Government from having held a place of eminence. Even in the freest countries our property is subject to the control and disposal of our partners, to whom the laws have given a sovereign authority. Deprived of a voice in legislation, obliged to submit to those laws which are imposed upon us, is it not sufficient to make us indifferent to the public welfare? Yet all history and every age exhibit instances of patriotic virtue in the female sex; which considering our situation equals the most heroic of yours.”

Abigail Adams (1744–1818) 2nd First Lady of the United States (1797–1801)

Letter to John Adams (17 June 1782)

Age, Law, Sex, History

“Family life itself, that safest, most traditional, most approved of female choices, is not a sanctuary: It is, perpetually, a dangerous place.”

Margaret Drabble (1939) Novelist, biographer and critic

"The Limits of Mother Love", in The New York Times Book Review, March 31, 1985

Life, Family

“(Bartender Harry) How can you tell the male bird from the female bird? (Sylvia) He's the one with the furrowed brow; she's the happy-go-lucky one…. He's the one reading the sports page; she's the one with 12 pairs of tiny shoes. (Harry) I don't have time for this.”

Nicole Hollander (1939) Cartoonist

Source: Sylvia cartoon strip, p. 9

Happiness, Shoe, Bird, Sport

“The picture of a naked girl is the most peaceful, but also the most unveiling image you can create, so it is very powerful. … We live in a patriarchal system where the female body is totally controlled and used. Women are ashamed of their bodies, and this is a deep problem. We are slaves of men because we do not control our sexuality.”

Oksana Shachko (1987–2018) Ukrainian artist and activist with FEMEN

Interview with Luxemburger Wort (2015)

Women, Men, Peace, Girl

“That's the trouble with foreign travel. You spend half your time trying to find edible food, and the rest fighting off men who profess extravagant love to your female companions. I'm amazed how many women believe outright lies from foreigners.”

Lindsey Davis book A Body in the Bath House

A Body in the Bath House

Love, Women, Men, Food

“So far, twenty-two people have received the Nobel award in economics. Not one of them has been female—so, to judge only from the past, the most important thing to do if you want to be a Nobel laureate is to be male. I hasten to add that the absence of females is not, I believe, attributable to male chauvinist bias on the part of the Swedish Nobel Committee. I believe that the economics profession as a whole would have been nearly unanimous that, during the period in question, only one female candidate met the relevant standards—the English economist Joan Robinson, who has since died. The failure of the Nobel Committee to award her a prize may well have reflected bias but not sex bias. The economists here will understand what I am talking about. … A second requirement is to be a U. S. citizen. Twelve of the twenty-two recipients of the Nobel Prize were from the United States, four from the United Kingdom, two from Sweden, and one each from four other countries. … Of the twelve Americans who have won the Nobel Prize in economics, nine either studied or taught at the University of Chicago. So the next lesson is to go to the University of Chicago.”

Milton Friedman (1912–2006) American economist, statistician, and writer

"Milton Friedman" in William Breit and Roger W. Spencer (ed.) Lives of the laureates

People, Sex, Failure, Understanding

“For male and female alike, the bodies of the other sex are messages signaling what we must do — they are glowing signifiers of our own necessities.”

John Updike (1932–2009) American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic

“The Female Body,” Michigan Quarterly Review (1990)

Sex

“A small but significant number of angry and historically minded women comprehend the women's revolution in the visionary sense of an end to the catastrophic brotherhood and a return to the former glory and wise equanimity of the matriarchies. We don't know how this will take place exactly, nor the resultant nature of the new social forms, we know that it will take place, and in fact that the process of its development is now irreversibly underway. Of supreme importance in this process is the recovery by modern woman of her mythology as models for theory, consciousness, and action…. The Swiss patrician Jacob Bachofen was one of the first to discover "the female era at the lower seam of history, with its sacerdotal, political, and economic female dominion."”

Jill Johnston book Lesbian Nation

…. The fruits of this research were until recently unavailable except to a few initiates and they now form a cornerstone of the second wave in the feminist revolution....
Lesbian Nation (N.Y.: Simon & Schuster, 1973 (SBN (not ISBN) 671-21433-0)), pp. 248–249.

Women, History, Nature, Sense

“This is especially important when addressing less statistically savvy audiences. Such audiences could perhaps be encouraged to think of two normal distributions, one representing males and the other females. Instead of imagining that natural selection creates two distinct psychological types — a male type and a female type, described by the mean values for each group — they could be encouraged to imagine that natural selection pushes the male and female distributions closer together or further apart. This simple expedient may help people to visualize the effects of natural selection on average sex differences without at the same time losing sight of the variation within each sex.”

Steve Stewart-Williams (1971)

Source: The Ape that Kicked the Hornet's Nest (2013), p. 268

People, Sex, Imagination, Nature

“Father-dominated people who form father-dominated cultures have father-religions: a male deity, an authoritative scripture, a strong central government, an intolerance for inquiry and research, a repressive sexual attitude, a deep conservatism (for one does not change what Father built), a rigid demarcation, in dress and conduct, between the sexes, and a profound horror of homosexuality.
Mother-dominated people who form mother-dominated cultures have mother religions: a female deity served by priestesses, a liberal government—one which feeds the masses and succors the helpless—a great tolerance for experimental thought, a permissive attitude toward sex, a hazy boundary between the insignes of the sexes, and a dread of incest.”

Theodore Sturgeon book Venus Plus X

Section 43 (pp. 131-132)
Venus Plus X (1960)

People, Religion, Sex, Strong

“Moslems everywhere behave with equal savagery. They behead criminals, stone to death female — only female — adulteresses, throw acid in the faces of women who refuse to wear the chador, mutilate the genitals of young girls and ritually abuse animals.”

Robert Kilroy-Silk (1942) British politician

Daily Express, 15 January 1995

Death, Women, Girl, Animals

“But it was impossible to remain so long in the company of a female, even a divine one, without suffering some form of disillusionment.”

M. K. Hobson (1969) American writer

Prologue (p. 14)
The Hidden Goddess (2011)

Suffering

“The universe is female
Eluding the science of men
You sway and you swagger with your neat little dagger
You're gonna blow it again ….
I'll prove her existence in everything
The soul of her rivers and stones
Her acquiescence in everything
Her essence, her presence, her bones. ~ Essence”

Steve Kilbey (1954) British artist

Lyrics

Men, Soul, Universe, Science

“For me, being a 'lady painter' was never an issue. I don't resent being a female painter. I don't exploit it. I paint.”

Helen Frankenthaler (1928–2011) American artist

Quote by John Gruen, in 'The Party's Over Now: Reminiscences of the fifties — New York's artists, writers, musicians, and their friends'; Viking Press, 1972 - ISBN 0-916366-54-5; as cited by by Grace Glueck, in 'New York Times', 2011
1970s - 1980s

Painting

“Here's the clear "science:"When the male sperm and female egg join, a new and unique life form is created. At conception. Not at birth or viability, or when a lawyer says so. At conception this happens. John McCain got it right; Obama pled less scientific knowledge than a 5th grader.This life is either human or something else. Science irrefutably would declare that the life which is starting from that moment is human. It's not a stalk of broccoli, it's not a parrot, squirrel, or dolphin. It will never become a tree—it can only become a human. It has the entire DNA schedule that it will have for the rest of its life right then. In days it will begin to take on increasingly observable human characteristics and form, but at conception, it is biologically human.If this life is human, then the only issue left is whether this human life falls under the notion that it has a fundamental right of existence or not. If not, it is because we as a culture have decided that some human lives are simply not worth living. If we can decide that about an innocent and unborn baby, we can also decide it on the basis of less absolute criteria than that. If we make that choice (and this is all about "CHOICE," isn’t it?) then someone may decide that a terminally ill person is not a life worth living. Maybe a severely disabled child is a life not worth living; what about a person with a limited IQ? Say that's absurd—that an educated and enlightened society would never be so audacious as to begin to terminate life based on such arbitrary excuses? Maybe you haven't studied Nazi Germany, in which the murder of six million Jews was justified because of their religion and millions of others were murdered because of their politics. Germany was not a primitive, superstitious culture. It was one filled with the intelligentsia and enlightened.This is an important issue. It's why we can't trust Obama with America's future because he's not even sure which Americans are worth saving and which ones aren't. And it's why that for many of us, McCain's selection of a running mate really does matter. Because John McCain clearly is pro life, I will support and vote for him because Obama is not an option for me as a pro life person. I will be disappointed if McCain doesn't pick a true pro life person and realize that should that happen, he will lose many of the very people who supported me. I cannot expect all of you to vote for McCain if he chooses someone whose record isn't pro life. It will be a less than perfect decision for all of us—our only real choices are McCain and Obama; one will protect life and one won't. Some will argue for a 3rd party candidate and I respect that, but in political realities, that is essentially a vote for Obama and I can't go there.”

Mike Huckabee (1955) Arkansas politician

A Message from the Governor
HuckPAC
2008-08-23
http://www.huckpac.com/?Fuseaction=Blogs.View&Blog_id=1848&CommentPage=5
2011-03-01

Life, People, Education, Religion

“In early times, the great majority of the male sex were slaves, as well as the whole of the female. And many ages elapsed, some of them ages of high cultivation, before any thinker was bold enough to question the rightfulness, and the absolute social necessity, either of the one slavery or of the other.”

John Stuart Mill The Subjection of Women

Source: The Subjection of Women (1869), Ch. 1

Age, Sex, Question, Time

“Unable to grasp the importance of Black women’s intersectional experiences, not only courts, but feminist and civil rights thinkers as well have treated Black women in ways that deny both the unique compoundedness of their situation and the centrality of their experiences to the larger classes of women and Blacks. Black women are regarded either as too much like women or Blacks and the compounded nature of their experience is absorbed into the collective experiences of either group or as too different, in which case Black women’s Blackness or femaleness sometimes has placed their needs and perspectives at the margin of the feminist and Black liberationist agendas. While it could be argued that this failure represents an absence of political will to include Black women, I believe that it reflects an uncritical and disturbing acceptance of dominant ways of thinking about discrimination. Consider first the definition of discrimination that seems to be operative in antidiscrimination law: Discrimination which is wrongful proceeds from the identification of a specific class or category; either a discriminator intentionally identifies this category, or a process is adopted which somehow disadvantages all members of this category.”

Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw book Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex

Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex (1989)

Women, Law, Way, Failure

“The teenage female has less demand to perform and more resources to attract love. Her body and mind are more genetic gifts.”

Warren Farrell book The Myth of Male Power

Source: The Myth of Male Power (1993), Part II: The Glass Cellars of the disposable sex, p. 166.

Love

“well boss
mehitabel the cat
has reappeared in her old
haunts with a
flock of kittens

archy she said to me
yesterday
the life of a female
artist is continually
hampered what in hell
have i done to deserve
all these kittens
i look back on my life
and it seems to me to be
just one damned kitten
after another
i am a dancer archy
and my only prayer
is to be allowed
to give my best to my art
but just as i feel
that i am succeeding
in my life work
along comes another batch
of these damned kittens
it is not archy
that i am shy on mother love
god knows i care for
the sweet little things
curse them
but am i never to be allowed
to live my own life
i have purposely avoided
matrimony in the interests
of the higher life
but i might just
as well have been a domestic
slave for all the freedom
i have gained
i hope none of them
gets run over by
an automobile
my heart would bleed
if anything happened
to them and i found it out
but it isn t fair archy
it isn t fair
these damned tom cats have all
the fun and freedom
if i was like some of these
green eyed feline vamps i know
i would simply walk out on the
bunch of them and
let them shift for themselves
but i am not that kind
archy i am full of mother love
my kindness has always
been my curse
a tender heart is the cross i bear
self sacrifice always and forever
is my motto damn them
i will make a home
for the sweet innocent
little things
unless of course providence
in his wisdom should remove
them they are living
just now in an abandoned
garbage can just behind
a made over stable in greenwich
village and if it rained
into the can before i could
get back and rescue them
i am afraid the little
dears might drown
it makes me shudder just
to think of it
of course if i were a family cat
they would probably
be drowned anyhow
sometimes i think
the kinder thing would be
for me to carry the
sweet little things
over to the river
and drop them in myself
but a mother s love archy
is so unreasonable
something always prevents me
these terrible
conflicts are always
presenting themselves
to the artist
the eternal struggle
between art and life archy
is something fierce
yes something fierce
my what a dramatic
life i have lived
one moment up the next
moment down again
but always gay archy always gay
and always the lady too
in spite of hell
well boss it will
be interesting to note
just how mehitabel
works out her present problem
a dark mystery still broods
over the manner
in which the former
family of three kittens
disappeared
one day she was talking to me
of the kittens
and the next day when i asked
her about them
she said innocently
what kittens
interrogation point
and that was all
i could ever get out
of her on the subject
we had a heavy rain
right after she spoke to me
but probably that garbage can
leaks so the kittens
have not yet
been drowned”

Don Marquis (1878–1937) American writer

mehitabel and her kittens http://donmarquis.com/reading-room/kittens/ <br class="br">archy and mehitabel (1927)

Love, Life, Wisdom, God

“Since the 1920s, grand illusion on stage has been synonymous with the restraint and mutilation of female assistants, as if the first act a lucky mortal, newly endowed with the ability to overturn the laws of the universe, would wish to carry out would be the casual torture of the fairer sex for our entertainment.”

Derren Brown (1971) British illusionist

Books, Confessions of a Conjuror (2010)

Law, Sex, Universe

“Like everything else, James Bond (Pierce Brosnan) has had to change for the nineties. The venerable 007, coming off a long hiatus, has taken on his sixth face (the other five being Sean Connery, David Niven, George Lazenby, Roger Moore, and Timothy Dalton), changed his mode of transport from an Aston Martin to a BMW, and now answers to a female "M" (played dryly by Judi Dench). Bond's attitudes towards women have been modified — although not greatly. Also, there's more action in GoldenEye than in previous 007 entries — enough to keep a ninety-minute film moving at a frantic pace. Unfortunately, this movie isn't ninety-minutes long — it's one-hundred thirty, which means that fully one-quarter of GoldenEye is momentum-killing padding.”

James Berardinelli (1967) American film critic

Review http://www.reelviews.net/movies/g/goldeneye.html of GoldenEye (1995). <br class="br">Three star reviews

Women, Change

“Adjusting my thick glasses and dropping my half-Chinese Austin Powers accent, I futilely try to defend myself (noting there's nothing worse in the world than being screamed at by a bunch of female celebrity impersonators).”

Harmon Leon

An Imposter Impersonator, p. 78.
The American Dream (2008)

World

““…Mas‘ud hunted through the country around Bahraich, and whenever he passed by the idol temple of Suraj-kund, he was wont to say that he wanted that piece of ground for a dwelling-place. This Suraj-kund was a sacred shrine of all the unbelievers of India. They had carved an image of the sun in stone on the banks of the tank there. This image they called Balarukh, and through its fame Bahraich had attained its flourishing condition. When there was an eclipse of the sun, the unbelievers would come from east and west to worship it, and every Sunday the heathen of Bahraich and its environs, male and female, used to assemble in thousands to rub their heads under that stone, and do it reverence as an object of peculiar sanctity. Mas‘ud was distressed at this idolatry, and often said that, with God’s will and assistance, he would destroy that mine of unbelief, and set up a chamber for the worship of the Nourisher of the Universe in its place, rooting out unbelief from those parts…
“Meanwhile, the Rai Sahar Deo and Har Deo, with several other chiefs, who had kept their troops in reserve, seeing that the army of Islam was reduced to nothing, unitedly attacked the body-guard of the Prince. The few forces that remained to that loved one of the Lord of the Universe were ranged round him in the garden. The unbelievers, surrounding them in dense numbers, showered arrows upon them. It was then, on Sunday, the 14th of the month Rajab, in the aforesaid year 424 (14th June, 1033) as the time of evening prayer came on, that a chance arrow pierced the main artery in the arm of the Prince of the Faithful…”

Ghazi Saiyyad Salar Masud (1014) semi-legendary Muslim figure from India

Awadh (Uttar Pradesh), Mir‘at-i-Mas‘udi in Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own historians, Vol. II. p. 524-547

Love, God, Faith, Universe

“Throughout history, females have picked providers for mates. Males pick anything.”

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist

Attributed in 3,500 Good Quotes for Speakers (1985) edited by Gerald F. Lieberman, p. 114
1980s

History

“Amid an extended, international discussion of sexual misconduct and female confession, it has occurred to me that sometimes it can be difficult for women to understand one another’s pain. We are often told that experiences of oppression are actually the result of the supposedly overwrought emotional set point of womanhood, a pressure that compels us to keep our stories to ourselves — or, in the worst of cases, to look upon each other’s stories with excessive scrutiny, behavior prescribed by the poison of internalized misogyny.”

Lauren Duca (1991) American journalist

Sexism, Remembered and Forgotten (November 17, 2017)

Women, Pain, Behavior, Understanding

“I've been a television writer for a dozen years, and I've been fortunate to put words in the mouths of some great female characters. They've been working women, mostly, and I like to think they've become role models for a generation of girls trying to figure out their futures.
But let's be honest: TV isn't going to change anyone's perceptions of working women in the real world just by promoting fictional females to ever-higher positions of authority. And I'm not doing my job if I put a woman's career before her character.”

Jane Espenson (1964) American television writer and producer

How to Succeed at Vampire Slaying and Keep Your Soul (2005)

Women, World, Girl, Thinking

“The male dares to be different to the degree that he accepts his passivity and his desire to be female, his fagginess. The farthest out male is the dragqueen, but he, although different from most men, is exactly like all other dragqueens; like the functionalist, he has an identity - a female; he tries to define all his troubles away - but still no individuality. Not completely convinced that he's a woman, highly insecure about being sufficiently female, he conforms compulsively to the man-made feminine stereotype, ending up as nothing but a bundle of stilted mannerisms.”

Valerie Solanas (1936–1988) American radical feminist and writer. Attempted to assassinate Andy Warhol.

Source: SCUM MANIFESTO (1967), p. 8 ("dragqueen", "dragqueens", & hyphens (not en- or em-dashes) so in original).

Men

“Is loving men contradictory to feminism? Hardly. Every true feminist, I believe, is deepened and matured by being also a masculinist--a person who understands the male search for equality and approval as the male experiences it. As is every masculinist deepened by being a feminist (a person who understands the female search for equality and approval as the female experiences it.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Source: Why Men Are the Way They Are (1988), p. 368.

Love, Men, Search, Understanding

“Without getting into blushing territory, think how in almost all of creation the male and female are made for each other. From dogs and elephants, to birds and bees, to man, each is designed for reproduction. Like a nut and a bolt, they are made to fit together perfectly.”

Ray Comfort (1949) New Zealand-born Christian minister and evangelist

God doesn't believe in atheists (2002)

Dogs, Bird, Thinking, Bee

“No fighting, Glorias! Gloria Estefan [the real one] to two female impersonators [Gloria #1 and Gloria #2]”

Gloria Estefan (1957) Cuban-American singer-songwriter, actress and divorciada

The Evolution Tour: Live in Miami
2007, 2008

Fight

“The Mockery Bird regarded him with a roguish eye, head on one side, and took a few slow steps into the clearing. With its head on one side and its foot tentatively raised, it seemed like some sort of lanky, avian dancing master. It stepped forward among the guava stems with a mincing delicacy and then shuffled its wings like someone shuffling a pack of cards. He noticed that it had very long eyelashes which it raised and lowered over its large gaily-sparkling eyes. … There was another complicated rustle and flurry in the undergrowth and then, projected into the clearing by its own nervous eagerness, came a female Mockery Bird making strange, peeting noises, which became a soothing babble when she caught sight of the male. She went up to her mate and briefly preened his throat feathers as an over-zealous wife will straighten the tie of her consort. … Here in front of him, cossetting each other, were two birds which were thought to be extinct.”

Gerald Durrell book The Mockery Bird

The Mockery Bird (1981)

Bird, Dance

“Even when Muslims do something intolerable, Europeans have to tolerate it in atonement of past colonial and imperialist misdeeds. Victimhood is an inexhaustible capital that Muslims in Europe could dig into for generations. The fact that the killers of Charlie Hebdo staff had never even visited Algeria did not deprive them of their ancestral capital of victimhood because of French colonial presence there decades before the two killers were born in Paris. Even acts that are clearly not worthy of respect, such as female genital mutilation, must be respected in the name of “cultural otherness.””

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

What happens to Western values if no one stands up against Islam? http://nypost.com/2015/01/11/what-happens-to-western-values-if-no-one-stands-up-against-islam/, New York Post (January 11, 2015). <br class="br">New York Post

Past

“If I have blamed here Christianity, Christian morals, Christian humanity and helpfulness; if I have spoken ironically of all the lighter, minor, and female virtues this teaching has produced and still produces—I have done so in the name of those who have lifted themselves above them, who have outgrown them, who have acquired greater than Christian virtues.”

Oscar Levy (1867–1946) German physician and writer

Preface, pp. x-xi.
The Revival of Aristocracy (1906)

Help

“When a man is forced into early retirement, he is often being ‘given up for a younger man.’ Being forced into early retirement can be to a man what being ‘given up for a younger woman’ is for a woman… Why do many men get more upset by retirement than women do from the empty nest —when their children leave home? When females retire from children, they can try a career; when a man retires from a career, his children are gone.”

Warren Farrell book The Myth of Male Power

Source: The Myth of Male Power (1993), Part II: The Glass Cellars of the disposable sex, p. 174.

Women, Men, Children, Home

“Harry Dresden: Susan smiled at me, giving Molly the Female Once-Over--a process by which one woman creates a detailed profile of another woman based upon about a million subtle details of clothing, jewelry, makeup, and body type, and then decides how much of a social threat she might be. Men have a parallel process, but it's binary: Does he have beer? If yes, will he share with me?”

Jim Butcher The Dresden Files

Source: The Dresden Files, Changes (2010), Chapter 9

Men, Smile, Beer, Clothes

“[Footnote:] The female of any species is generally regarded as a relatively anabolic organism, more passive than the male, who is relatively katabolic and active. The fact remains that one frequently runs across a rather katabolic female.”

Will Cuppy (1884–1949) American writer

The Viviparous Blenny
How to Become Extinct (1941)

“The beautiful Monique insists on joining their expedition and cannot be dissuaded; we think at first she has a nefarious motive, but no, she's probably taken a class in screenplay construction and knows that the film requires a sexy female lead. This could be the first case in cinematic history of a character voluntarily entering a movie because of the objective fact that she is required.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/around-the-world-in-80-days-2004 of Around the World in 80 Days (16 June 2004) <br class="br">Reviews, Three star reviews

Beauty, History, Motivation, Thinking

“Modern technologies of warfare have made it possible for an individual or nation to bring total destruction to large segments of our population. And the greatest threat comes from those nations which have the most depriving environments for their children and which are the most repressive of sexual affection and female sexuality. We will have the most to fear when these nations acquire the weapons of modern warfare. Tragically, this has already begun.”

James W. Prescott (1930) American psychologist

"Body Pleasure and the Origins of Violence" (1975)

Children, Fear

“People do want to be young and beautiful. When they meet in the street, male or female, if they're getting older they look at each other's face a little ashamed. It's clear they want to say, Excuse me, I didn't mean to draw attention to mortality and gravity all at once. I didn't want to remind you, my dear friend, of our coming eviction, first from liveliness, then from life. To which, most of the time, the friend's eyes will courteously reply, My dear, it's nothing at all. I hardly noticed.”

Grace Paley (1922–2007) American writer and activist

"Friends"

Life, People, Beauty, Time

“To be sure he's a "Man," the male must see to it that the female be clearly a "Woman," the opposite of a "Man," that is, the female must act like a faggot. And Daddy's Girl, all of whose female instincts were tromped out of her when little, easily and obligingly adapts herself to the role.”

Valerie Solanas (1936–1988) American radical feminist and writer. Attempted to assassinate Andy Warhol.

Source: SCUM MANIFESTO (1967), p. 8.