Quotes about woman
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“You see a lot of smart guys with dumb women, but you hardly ever see a smart woman with a dumb guy.”

Erica Jong (1942) Novelist, poet, memoirist, critic

Women, Guy, For women

“A woman has got to love a bad man once or twice in her life to be thankful for a good one.”

Elizabeth Taylor (1932–2011) British-American actress

Love, Life

“The most beautiful makeup of a woman is passion. But cosmetics are easier to buy.”

Yves Saint Laurent (1936–2008) fashion designer

Variant: The most beautiful make-up of a woman is passion. But cosmetics are easier to buy.

Beauty, Passion, For women

“it taught me, that when a woman lets herself love, she loses. it taught me that to survive, you rely on yourself first and last." -adrianne

"It should have also taught you that sometimes love has no threshold." -philip”

Nora Roberts (1950) American romance writer

Source: Sweet Revenge

Love

“And taking her friend’s hand, she put it on her breast, on that firm round covering of a woman’s heart which the male often finds so satisfying that he makes no attempt to find what lies beneath it.”

Guy De Maupassant (1850–1893) French writer

Heart

“There must be something in books, something we can’t imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there. You don’t stay for nothing.”

Ray Bradbury book Fahrenheit 451

Source: Fahrenheit 451

Books, Imagination, Housing

“Feeding a crowd?' the woman behind the counter asked.
Yes, ma'am,' Fang said sweetly. I thought.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: Maximum Ride The Angel Experiment

“I think that the most important thing a woman can have - next to talent, of course - is her hairdresser.”

Joan Crawford (1904–1977) American actress

Interview, Hollywood Reporter (1942)

Thinking

“It is the same woman, I know, for she is always creeping, and most women do not creep by daylight.”

Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935) American feminist, writer, commercial artist, lecturer and social reformer

Source: The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories

Women

“I love you as much as it is possible for a man to love a woman.”

Paullina Simons book Tatiana and Alexander

Source: Tatiana and Alexander

Love

“and yet she was leaving the world as a woman who had love and been loved back. she was leaving it as a friend, a companion, a guardian. a mother. a person of consequence at last.”

Khaled Hosseini book A Thousand Splendid Suns

Mariam, p. 370
A Thousand Splendid Suns (2007)
Context: She was leaving the world as woman who had loved and been loved back. She was leaving it as a friend, a companion, a guardian. A mother. A person of consequence at last. No. It was not so bad, Mariam thought, that she should die this way. Not so bad.

Love, World, Personality

“You are the only woman who ever answered the demands of my imagination.”

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

Imagination

“This is what a woman is: unadorned, after children and work and age, and experience-these are the marks of living.”

Zadie Smith On Beauty

Source: On Beauty

Children, Age

“Yes, I am sad, sad as a circus-lioness, sad as an eagle without wings, sad as a violin with only one string and that one broken, sad as a woman who is growing old. Sad, sad, sad…”

Jean Rhys book Good Morning, Midnight

Source: Good Morning, Midnight

Sadness

“Then he raised her enough to whisper in her ear, and while his voice was tender, his words were savage. "You're my woman, and no man or God or ghost will ever take you from me.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Where Dreams Begin

God

“I was in the supermarket the other day, and I met a lady in the aisle where they keep the generic brands. Her name was 'woman.”

Steven Wright (1955) American actor and author

“I spent most of my youth hauling sides of beef and pork to my father's shop. Carrying you is far more enjoyable."

"How sweet," Annabelle mumbled sickly, her eyes closed. "Every woman dreams of being told that she's preferable to a dead cow.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Secrets of a Summer Night

Youth, Dreams, Dead

“The fire, baby. It'll burn us both. There's no place in this world for our kind of fire. My warrior woman. My valkyrie. You'll always be mine. Always. And never.”

Frank Miller book The Big Fat Kill

Source: The Big Fat Kill

World, Baby

“If it is so painful to love and to be charged with this electric current, how much more painful must it be to a woman and to be the current, and to inspire love.”

Borís Pasternak book Doctor Zhivago

Source: Doctor Zhivago (1957)

Love, Pain

“A woman who acts like a fool is a fool.”

Arthur Golden book Memoirs of a Geisha

Source: Memoirs of a Geisha

Fools

“A young woman in love always looks like Patience on a monument Smiling at Grief.”

Jane Austen book Northanger Abbey

Source: Northanger Abbey

Love, Smile, Patience

“To rebel against being born a woman seemed as foolish to her as to take pride in it.”

Milan Kundera book The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Source: The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“Sometimes I think illness sits inside every woman, waiting for the right moment to bloom.”

Gillian Flynn book Sharp Objects

Source: Sharp Objects

Thinking, Waiting

“Maybe-- maybe love makes you suspicious and doubting. Is it true that when you love a woman you are never sure-- never sure of her because you aren't sure of yourself?”

John Steinbeck book East of Eden

Source: East of Eden (1952)
Context: Maybe that's the reason," Adam said slowly, feeling his way. "Maybe if I had loved him I would have been jealous of him. You were. Maybe-maybe love makes you suspicious and doubting. Is it true that when you love a woman you are never sure-never sure of her because you aren't sure of yourself? I can see it pretty clearly. I can see how you loved him and what it did to you. I did not love him. Maybe he loved me. He tested me and hurt me and punished me and finally he sent me out like a sacrifice, maybe to make up for something. But he did not love you, and so he had faith in you. Maybe — why, maybe it's a kind of reverse.

Love

“Someday every woman will have orgasms- like every family has color TV- and we can all get on with the business of life.”

Erica Jong (1942) Novelist, poet, memoirist, critic

Source: How to Save Your Own Life

Life, Family, Color, Business

“When a woman starts to disentangle herself from patriarchy, ultimately she is abandoned to her own self.”

Sue Monk Kidd (1948) Novelist

Source: The Dance of the Dissident Daughter: A Woman's Journey from Christian Tradition to the Sacred Feminine

“I'm not a. I have no male pride for you to trick me with, and I am not interested in single combat. That is entirely a weakness of your sex, not mine. I am a woman. I will use any weapon and all weapons to get what I want.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Fallen Angels

Source: City of Fallen Angels

Sex

“… Nobody knows like a woman how to say things that are both sweet and profound. Sweetness and depth, this is all of woman; this is Heaven.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

“Simon’s love life was complicated, but there was a pang, just for a moment, for this woman talking graphic novels with him.
Ah, well. Tessa Gray, foxy nerd, was probably dating someone already.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: The Whitechapel Fiend

Love, Life

“Now he saw that she understood entirely too well and he felt the usual masculine indignation at the duplicity of women. Added to it was the usual masculine disillusionment in discovering that a woman has a brain.”

Margaret Mitchell book Vom Winde verweht (1937 German edition)

Source: Gone with the Wind

Women

“Internet porn makes everything more reasonable -- once you've realized there is a massive subculture of upwardly mobile people who think it's erotic to see an Asian woman giving a hand job to a javelina, nothing else in the world seems crazy.”

Chuck Klosterman (1972) Author, Columnist

People, World, Thinking

“I am a woman in process. I'm just trying like everybody else. I try to take every conflict, every experience, and learn from it. Life is never dull.”

Oprah Winfrey (1954) American businesswoman, talk show host, actress, producer, and philanthropist

Life, Learning

“For in other ways a woman is full of fear, defenseless, dreads the sight of cold steel; but, when once she is wronged in the matter of love, no other soul can hold so many thoughts of blood.”

Euripidés Medea

Source: Medea

Love, Fear, Way, Soul

“When Roseanne read the first script of mine that got into her hands without being edited by someone else she said, 'How can you write a middle-aged woman this well?' I said, 'If you met my mom you wouldn't ask'.”

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

Age, Moms, Reading

“The lions sing and the hills take flight.
The moon by day, and the sun by night.
Blind woman, deaf man, jackdaw fool.
Let the Lord of Chaos rule.”

Robert Jordan Lord of Chaos

Chant from a children’s game heard in Great Arvalon, the Fourth Age
(15 October 1994)
Source: Lord of Chaos

Fools, Singing, Sun, Night

“I'm a woman. I have a right to change my mind.”

Sidney Sheldon Master of the Game

Source: Master of the Game

Change

“I think women rule the world, and that no man has ever done anything that a woman either hasn't allowed him to do or encouraged him to do.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Rolling Stone interview (21 June 1984)

Women, World, Thinking

“It can be exhausting eating a meal cooked by a man. With a woman, it's, Ho hum, pass the beans. A guy, you have to act like he just built the Taj Mahal.”

Deb Caletti (1963) American writer

Source: The Queen of Everything

Guy, Cooking

“You take a man half-bad and a woman half-bad and put their two good halves together and you got one human all good to share between. That's you [our son].”

Ray Bradbury book Something Wicked This Way Comes

Source: Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962), Chapter 28

“Men love a submissive woman, Damon said simply. Even when they say the don't. There's just something about a beautiful, soft woman looking to them to protect and take care of them that inspires a man to greatness.”

Maya Banks (1964) Author

Source: Sweet Surrender

Love, Men, Beauty

“I don’t need any plastic in my body to validate me as a woman.”

Courtney Love (1964) American punk singer-songwriter, musician, actress, and artist

“I realize what a strange in-between place I am in. The Young Woman inside has turned to go, but the Old Woman has not shown up.”

Sue Monk Kidd (1948) Novelist

Source: Traveling With Pomegranates: A Mother-Daughter Story

“At least as a single woman, I had time to pursue my own interests, read voraciously, and travel when opportunity presented.”

Tasha Alexander (1969) American writer

Source: And Only to Deceive

Travel, Time, Reading

“I could probably have made the head shot from the railing, but with an unfamiliar gun, it was too risky. I didn't want to accidentally shoot the woman in the head. Killing the hostage is always frowned upon.”

Laurell K. Hamilton book The Killing Dance

Source: The Killing Dance

“Marry an outdoors woman. That way, if you have to throw her out into the yard for the night, she can still survive.”

W.C. Fields (1880–1946) actor

Way, Night

“Anya, the minor goddess of Anarchy? A woman who had more balls than most men—because she’d cut them off the guys stupid enough to get in her way and kept them as souvenirs.”

Gena Showalter (1975) American writer

Source: The Darkest Seduction

Men, Stupidity, Way, Guy

“Stepping onto a brand-new path is difficult, but not more difficult than remaining in a situation, which is not nurturing to the whole woman.”

Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American author and poet

“I couldn't help wondering, is my husband so unattractive that no woman has ever wanted him? Except me, of course. I must have wanted him, in a way, once, but I've forgotten why, and I was too young to know what I was choosing.”

Graham Greene book The End of the Affair

Source: The End of the Affair

Way, Help

“A woman who is convinced that she deserves to accept only the best challenges herself to give the best. Then she is living phenomenally.”

Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American author and poet

“A woman who had fallen out of love with her life”

Jhumpa Lahiri book Interpreter of Maladies

Source: Interpreter of Maladies

Love, Life

“Here she comes, running, out of prison and off the pedestal: chains off, crown off, halo off, just a live woman.”

Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935) American feminist, writer, commercial artist, lecturer and social reformer

“… and the great advantage of being a literary woman, was that you could go everywhere and do everything.”

Henry James book The Portrait of a Lady

Source: The Portrait of a Lady

“It's as if every conversation with a woman was a test, and men always failed it, because they always lacked the key to the code and so they never quite understood what the conversation was really about.”

Orson Scott Card Enchantment

Source: Enchantment

Men

“Child, it's a very bad thing for a woman to face the worst that can happen to her, because after she's faced the worst she can't ever really fear anything again…. Scarlett, always save something to fear— even as you save something to love…”

Margaret Mitchell book Vom Winde verweht (1937 German edition)

Source: Gone with the Wind

Love, Fear

“It sometimes happens that a woman is handsomer at twenty-nine than she was ten years before.”

Jane Austen (1775–1817) English novelist

“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

Women, Time

“Strike an average between what a woman thinks of her husband a month before she marries him and what she thinks of him a year afterward, and you will have the truth about him.”

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

Truth, Thinking, Anniversary

“THERE ARE SOME MEN who enter a woman’s life and screw it up forever. Joseph Morelli did this to me—not forever, but periodically.”

Janet Evanovich book One for the Money

Source: One for the Money

Life, Men

“Dishonesty in a woman is a thing you never blame deeply - I was casually sorry, and then I forgot.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby

Source: Quoted, The Great Gatsby (1925), ch. 3

“I hate it when men go to strip bars. It lowers the rest of us that know if a man has to pay to see a woman naked, he is a loser and probably should get weeded out.”

Henry Rollins (1961) American singer-songwriter

Source: Solipsist

Men, Hate

“There's always someone asking you to underline one piece of yourself - whether it's Black, woman, mother, dyke, teacher, etc. - because that's the piece that they need to key in to. They want to dismiss everything else.”

Audre Lorde (1934–1992) writer and activist

Teachers

“Who knew that the path to a womans heart was through the soul of an honest man?”

Melissa de la Cruz (1971) American writer

Soul, Heart

“Suppose something goes wrong? Suppose you need a big full-figure woman like me to help straighten things out?"
Lula”

Janet Evanovich Four to Score

Source: Four to Score

Help

“The moment Eve bit into the apple, her eyes opened and she became free. She exposed the truth of what every woman knows: to find our sovereign voice often requires a betrayal.”

Terry Tempest Williams (1955) American writer

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

Truth, Betrayal

“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, Women, Men, Learning

“When the woman took the earbud, he didn't ask another question. She was a woman on a mission as she placed the tiny device in her ear and said, "This is Special Agent Abby Cameron. Let me talk to Macey McHenry.”

Ally Carter (1974) American writer

Source: Double Crossed: A Spies and Thieves Story

Question

“Woman work a great many miracles.”

Louisa May Alcott book Little Women

Source: Little Women

“He's probably never met a six-foot-tall hot elf-woman in a fur bikini, either”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Clary to Simon, pg. 118
Source: The Mortal Instruments, City of Bones (2007)

“A woman may be beautiful but have poor character. A man may be a business genius, making money left and right, but lack common courtesy, sensitivity, and compassion.”

Myles Munroe (1954–2014) Bahamian Evangelical Christian minister

Source: Waiting and Dating

Money, Beauty, Business

“I don't need handcuffs to enslave a woman." -Ranger to Stephanie”

Janet Evanovich Hard Eight

Source: Hard Eight

“I seek truth and beauty in the transparency of an autumn leaf, in the perfect form of a seashell on the beach, in the curve of a woman's back, in the texture of an ancient tree trunk, but also in the elusive forms of reality.”

Isabel Allende book Portrait in Sepia

Source: Portrait in Sepia

Truth, Beauty, Autumn, Reality

“Do you believe a man can truly love a woman and constantly betray her? Never mind physically but betray her in his mind, in the very "poetry of his soul". Well, it's not easy but men do it all the time.”

Mario Puzo book Fools Die

Source: Fools Die

Love, Men, Soul, Time

“Marriage is an alliance entered into by a man who can't sleep with the window shut, and a woman who can't sleep with the window open.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

Marriage, Sleep, Anniversary

“No woman ever ages beyond eighteen in her heart.”

Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) American science fiction author

Age, Heart

“Status ought not to be measured by a woman's ability to attract and snare a man.”

Germaine Greer book The Female Eunuch

Source: The Female Eunuch

“Let woman out of the home, let man into it, should be the aim of education. The home needs man, and the world outside needs woman.”

Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) American writer

World, Education, Home

“There is such a thing as too much beauty in a woman and it is often a burden as crippling as homeliness and far more dangerous. It takes much luck and integrity to survive the gift of perfect beauty, and its impermanence is its most cunning betrayal.”

Pat Conroy book The Prince of Tides

Source: The Prince of Tides

Beauty, Betrayal, Perfection

“Woman wants monogamy;
Man delights in novelty.
Love is woman's moon and sun;
Man has other forms of fun.
Woman lives but in her lord;
Count to ten, and man is bored.
With this the gist and sum of it,
What earthly good can come of it?”

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

Love, Sun

“Lord, ye gave me a rare woman, and God! I loved her well.”

Diana Gabaldon book Dragonfly in Amber

Source: Dragonfly in Amber

Love, God

“A woman's never too old to make an idiot of herself. It goes along with equality of the sexes and potty parity.”

Janet Evanovich Three to Get Deadly

Source: Three to Get Deadly

Sex

“The great secret of true success, of true happiness, is this: the man or woman who asks for no return, the perfectly unselfish person, is the most successful.”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher

Happiness, Secret, Success, Personality

“But even a ninety-year-old blind priest would stop and stare at this woman. If he weren’t blind, that is. Dumb metaphor, I thought. I’ll have to work on that one. I have trouble with metaphors.”

Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer

Source: Steelheart

“After all, it's not every day a woman is given a kingdom of dreams.”

Judith McNaught book A Kingdom of Dreams

Source: A Kingdom of Dreams

Dreams

“Now I am old-fashioned. A woman, I consider, should be womanly. I have no patience with the modern neurotic girl who jazzes from morning to night, smokes like a chimney, and uses language which would make a billingsgate fishwoman blush!”

Agatha Christie book Murder on the links

Source: The Murder on the Links

Girl, Fashion, Patience, Night

“Immodest creature, you do not want a woman who will accept your faults, you want the one who pretends you are faultless – one who will caress the hand that strikes her and kiss the lips that lie to her.”

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

Mais, fat impudent, tu ne veux pas qu'on te pardonne, tu veux qu'on croie ou qu'on prétende n'avoir rien à te pardonner. Tu veux qu'on baise la main qui frappe et la bouche qui ment.
Source: Letter (17 June 1837) in The Intimate Journal of George Sand (1929) translated and edited by Marie Jenney Howe; also quoted in The Quotable Woman, 1800-1975 (1978) by Elaine Partnow

Lie, Kiss