Incarcerated Women Quotes

[Solitary confinement] is terrible. That is terrible. You're in a grave. You can't do anything. Everything's brought to you and you're in a room all day, except to come out of the showers. So when I would come out, I would entertain myself by singing, doing little mock concerts. And then when I was in the room, I would develop a routine. Like I have a lot of hair under here, so I would take my hair down and take all day to braid it on purpose. Stretch the hours out. Then I might write. And I would clean the floor. And I would look out the window. And then I'd devote a whole day to just reading. I was Christian then, trying to be. So I would read the whole Bible. I would break it down into sections. You're in a grave and you're trying to live. That's how to best describe it: trying to live in a grave. You're trying to live 'cause you're not dead yet, but nobody hears you when you call out, 'Hey, I'm alive! ~ Megan Sweeney

It's a little bit late in the day for men to object that women are getting outside their proper sphere. ~ Marjory Stoneman Douglas

I could remember the details of the meeting exactly. My dad had worn a pink shirt, the button-down kind that his new girlfriend, Cindy, probably bought him. She's a stylist, which means that she gets paid by adults to dress them in age-inappropriate clothing and then tell them that they look "hip." Atlanta is full of tight-assed, bleached-bond women who look twenty from behind and turn around to reveal their Botoxed, eight-thousand-year-old, veiny-handed glory. These were Cindy's clients. ~ Alison Umminger

The misuse of the term matriarch has led many people to identify any woman present in a household where no male resides a matriarch. Although anthropologists disagree about whether or not matriarchal societies ever really existed, an examination of available information about the supposed social structure of matriarchies proves without any doubt that the social status of the matriarch was in no way similar to that of black women in the United States. ~ Bell Hooks

The system which admits the unworthy to the vote provided they are men, and shuts out the worthy provided they are women, is so unjust and illogical that its perpetuation is a sad reflection upon American thinking. ~ Carrie Chapman Catt

The quality you most admire in a man? Courage moral and physical: 'anima' - the ability to think like a woman. Also a sense of the absurd.
The quality you most admire in a woman? Courage moral and physical: "anima" - the ability to visualize the mind and need of a man. Also a sense of the absurd. ~ Christopher Hitchens

Yes, women have always had secrets and always will. I'm afraid men would be very distressed to learn what their darlings were thinking. Frankly, I don't think men are strong enough to bear the shock. ~ Carol K. Carr

Ce n'est gue' re que dans les asiles que les coquettes gardent avec ente tement une foi entie' re en des regards absents; normalement, elles re clament des te moins. Women fond of dress are hardly ever entirely satisfied not to be seen, except among the insane; usually they want witnesses. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

The future shouldn't be female or male---but one of women and men working together. That's the real definition of equality. ~ Karin Agness

He studied cities as women study their reflections. ~ O. Henry

There are tragedies and there are comedies, aren't there? And they are often more the same than different, rather like men and women, if you ask me. A comedy depends on stopping the story at exactly the right moment. ~ Siri Hustvedt

We are not called to give lifestyle tips or the self-help plumbing that today's worldly men and women crave. The Bible says the gospel is the "power of God for salvation to everyone who believes." (Romans 1:16b), so we must proclaim it. ~ Richard D. Phillips

Margaret used to say that there were two kinds of women: those with clear edges to them, and those who implied mystery. ~ Julian Barnes

The slightly aberrational spouse was a status symbol, too. The husband who cooked. The wife who played golf. The husband who took his children to school. The wife who ran her own business. Of course, it was chancier with the women than with the men. You couldn't push it too far. The marathoner wife who made partner - perhaps. The wife who could benchpress her own weight and made the cover of Fortune - too emasculating. The men, on the other hand, got unlimited mileage out of performing so-called women's tasks as long as they also had substantial disposable income and significant business cards. ~ Anna Quindlen

They had chains which they fastened about the leg of the nearest hog, and the other end of the chain they hooked into one of the rings upon the wheel. So, as the wheel turned, a hog was suddenly jerked off his feet and borne aloft. At the same instant the ear was assailed by a most terrifying shriek; the visitors started in alarm, the women turned pale and shrank back. The shriek was followed by another, louder and yet more agonizing--for once started upon that journey, the hog never came back; at the top of the wheel he was shunted off upon a trolley and went sailing down the room. And meantime another was swung up, and then another, and another, until there was a double line of them, each dangling by a foot and kicking in frenzy--and squealing. The uproar was appalling, perilous to the ear-drums; one feared there was too much sound for the room to hold--that the walls must give way or the ceiling crack. There were high squeals and low squeals, grunts, and wails of agony; there would come a momentary lull, and then a fresh outburst, louder than ever, surging up to a deafening climax. It was too much for some of the visitors--the men would look at each other, laughing nervously, and the women would stand with hands clenched, and the blood rushing to their faces, and the tears starting in their eyes. Meantime, heedless of all these things, the men upon the floor were going about their work. Neither squeals of hogs nor tears of visitors made any difference to them; one by one t ~ Upton Sinclair

Once upon a time, there were only three or four dominant women. Now, there are 10 to 15 who can vie for a Grand Slam. ~ Stephane Simian

Well, now those young women had gotten angry. And some older women were rearing back in horror at the force of their rage, and at the fact that a lot of that rage involved interrogating the whole system within which their feminist elders had risen. This moment was asking not just men but the pioneering women who'd succeeded alongside them to reckon with what had not been changed by feminism, how much gendered inequity older feminists had decided to live with, to participate in. ~ Rebecca Traister

I merged those two words, black and feminist, because I was surrounded by black women who were very tough and and who always assumed they had to work and rear children and manage homes. ~ Toni Morrison

On the attraction between man and woman society is based; but its refined is greater than its gross force, and its weight is like the gravitation of the globe. ~ C. A. Bartol

Please hear me, Girl: The world has enough women who know how to do their hair. It needs women who know how to do hard and holy things. ~ Ann Voskamp

I'm having trouble managing the mansion. What I need is a wife. ~ Ella T. Grasso

If a woman is harassed, it is because she asked for it? She dressed for it? She walked for it? She spoke for it? I would like to challenge that. ~ Fatima Mohammed

Women were always happy for a chance to educate a boy when he was young; Mat thought they assumed they could educate him out of becoming a man if they tried hard enough. ~ Robert Jordan

This chance will stand before you only once. ~ Sandra Day O'Connor

One of the advantages of loving women, of being loved by women: they will always do things far beyond the call of duty ~ Zadie Smith

The Humbling is not vintage Roth, despite its compelling premise. The bizarre series of episodes
mostly sexual encounters with women
which make up this short novel don't play to Roth's strengths. ( ... ) The Humbling disappoints because it avoids these universal implications, and veers off into a baroque world of the unique and fantastic, never quite deigning to make its world concrete or to give its characters the honour of an independent will. ~ Philip Hensher

I grew up in a house full of women: my mother, grandmother, three sisters, and two female cats. And I still have the buzz of their conversations in my head. As an adult, I have more female friends than male ones: I just love the way that women talk. ~ James Patterson

Darla shook her head, a small smirk on her lips. "You're such a mom," she told Katherine.
Katherine stared at her, puzzled. "You're a mom, too," she said softly.
"No, I gave birth. That doesn't make me a mom. Not like you."
A look passed between the two women like none they had ever shared before. For a split second, Katherine felt a slight connection. "Well, you rest. I'll check on you later." She turned and left the room, a funny, unexplainable feeling inside her. ~ Deanna Lynn Sletten

Their fantasy men--like Yon-sama--not only wouldn't spend their days barking drink orders from the couch, they might not ever be home at all. And that's okay. For these women the pleasure of a fantasy lover comes not from having him but from pining for him. ~ Pamela Druckerman

Now there were a few skirt-wearing, firm-breasted Algerian women who shuttled between our world and the world of the roumis, down in the French neighborhoods. We brats used to call them whores and stone them with our eyes. They were fascinating targets, because they could promise the pleasures of ~ Kamel Daoud

In the world of animation, you can be anything you wanna be. If you're a fat woman, you can play a skinny princess. If you're short wimpy guy, you can play a tall gladiator. If you're a white man, you can play an Arabian prince. And if you're a black man, you can play a donkey or a zebra. ~ Chris Rock

The real aim of social and industrial organization ought to be the production of strong, healthy men and women, capable of playing and working with the least pain and the greatest joy. ~ Charles A. Beard

A high school teacher once told me that identity is half what we tell ourselves and half what we tell other people about ourselves. But the missing piece he didn't mention - the piece that holds so much weight, especially in the minds of young women and girls - is the stories that other people tell us about ourselves. ~ Jessica Valenti

The cruise was the conduit for what would become my third book. While I was traveling and writing for ctnow.com, women across the United States and from the Caribbean emailed not to ask about my geographic journey but my existential one. "How do you find the courage to travel on your own?" they wondered. "How do you keep from getting lonely? Don't you feel self-conscious eating out alone?" After the first 30 emails like these I thought, There's a book here. It would be eight years before I published Postcards and Pearls: Life Lessons from Solo Moments on the Road. But the inspiration for publication came during the cruise. ~ Gina Greenlee

The Western societies which espouse free market capitalism survive by the pursuit of greed and, in their own way, like Communism, throw into leadership men and women (mostly men) who know how to gain, exert and manipulate power. ~ Davis McCaughey

If the world is to have a future, it lies in the hands of women. At time of this writing nearly half of all women in the Middle East are illiterate; millions in poor countries are shackled to the most basic daily urgencies of finding water and feeding children; the majority of the world's women exist in various forms of bondage to necessity, to poverty, and to men. (2007) ~ A.C. Grayling

Clearly it's not easy for women in modern society, no matter where they live. We still have to go the extra mile to prove that we are equal to men. we have to work longer hours and make more sacrifices. And we must emotionally protect ourselves from unfair, often vicious attacks made on us via the male members of our family. ~ Benazir Bhutto

In my lifetime I've been to bed with men, women, and odd pieces of furniture. ~ Tallulah Bankhead

the bombers of Manhattan represent fascism with an Islamic face. . . . What they abominate about 'the West,' to put it in a phrase, is not what Western liberals don't like and can't defend about their own system, but what they do like about it and must defend: its emancipated women, its scientific inquiry, its separation of religion from the state. Loose talk about chickens coming home to roost is the moral equivalent of the hateful garbage emitted by Falwell and Robertson. ~ Christopher Hitchens

I'm surrounded by very powerful women and very progressive men. ~ Christie Hefner