#feminism

"I know a girl from whose body sunbeams rose to the clouds as if they’d fallen from the sun.Her laugh was like a bangle of bells. “Your hair is wet,” I told her one day, “Did you take a bath?” “It is dew!” she laughed, “I’ve been lying in the grass. All morning long, I lay here waiting for the dawn."

"Men are from Earth, women are from Earth. Deal with it."

"I am trying to make art that relates to the deepest and most mythic concerns of human kind and I believe that, at this moment of history, feminism is humanism."

"I cannot understand anti-abortion arguments that centre on the sanctity of life. As a species we've fairly comprehensively demonstrated that we don't believe in the sanctity of life. The shrugging acceptance of war, famine, epidemic, pain and life-long poverty shows us that, whatever we tell ourselves, we've made only the most feeble of efforts to really treat human life as sacred."

"Capabilities are clearly manifested only when they have been realized."

"There will be no mass-based feminist movement as long as feminist ideas are understood only by a well-educated few."

"Why do people say "grow some balls"? Balls are weak and sensitive. If you wanna be tough, grow a vagina. Those things can take a pounding."

"A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle."

"For too many centuries women have been being muses to artists. I wanted to be the muse, I wanted to be the wife of the artist, but I was really trying to avoid the final issue — that I had to do the job myself."

"I want to write a book called, "Bonfires and Bras,"which follows around a young, braless feminist who struggles to adopt in air conditioned rooms, as her hardened nipples cause her excess embarrassment."

"I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat."

"When you grow up as a girl, the world tells you the things that you are supposed to be: emotional, loving, beautiful, wanted. And then when you are those things, the world tells you they are inferior: illogical, weak, vain, empty."

"I embrace the label of bad feminist because I am human. I am messy. I’m not trying to be an example. I am not trying to be perfect. I am not trying to say I have all the answers. I am not trying to say I’m right. I am just trying—trying to support what I believe in, trying to do some good in this world, trying to make some noise with my writing while also being myself."

"When you grow up as a girl, it is like there are faint chalk lines traced approximately three inches around your entire body at all times, drawn by society and often religion and family and particularly other women, who somehow feel invested in how you behave, as if your actions reflect directly on all womanhood."

"You can have it all, just not all at the same time."

"It's hard not to be a fighter when you're constantly under siege."

"Two separate beings, in different circumstances, face to face in freedom and seeking justification of their existence through one another, will always live an adventure full of risk and promise."(p. 248)"

"You educate a man; you educate a man. You educate a woman; you educate a generation."

"One life is all we have and we live it as we believe in living it. But to sacrifice what you are and to live without belief, that is a fate more terrible than dying."