Quotes about women

The way my mother always explained it, the traditional man wants a woman to be subservient, but he never falls in love with subservient women. He's attracted to independent women. "He's like an exotic bird collector," she said. "He only wants a woman who is free because his dream is to put her in a cage."

We have evolved. But our ideas of gender have not evolved very much.

I envy the tireless intimacy of women's friendship, its lastingness, and its unbendable strength.

Female physical frailty is not a reality but a myth with an agenda.

“Your sex have such a surprising animosity against one another when you do differ.”

A mere smile can determine a woman's fate. It is frightening. Fascinatingly so. I have to be careful.

Women fell into that category of fantasies and dreams that worked well when unfulfilled but presented all kinds of problems when brought out into the real world of trial and failure.

I like women, I never run them down as somehow inferior to men, and I have a contempt for men who do. And I think, for one thing, that women are just as principled as men—but they sure as hell aren’t the same kind of principles.

The beauty myth is always actually prescribing behavior and not appearance.

When you write, it’s like braiding your hair. Taking a handful of coarse, unruly strands and attempting to bring them into unity. Your fingers have still not perfected the task. Some of the braids are long, others are short. Some are thick, others are thin. Some are heavy. Others are light. Like the diverse women in your family. Those whose fables and metaphors, whose similes, and soliloquies, whose diction and je ne sais quoi daily slip into your survival soup, by way of their fingers. (epilogue)

'If a woman is worth remembering,' said my grandmother, 'there is no need to have her name carved in letters.' (p165)

Men are like the earth and we are the moon; we turn always one side to them, and they think there is no other, because they don't see it—but there is.