Women Who Write Quotes

People don't think of writers as sex objects. The women who write to me and suggest that we ought to have sex usually turn out to be, like, eighty. And their letters always end with, "Just joking." ~ Dave Barry

Women who write with an overriding consciousness that they write as women are engaged not in aspiration toward writing, but chiefly in a politics of sex. ~ Cynthia Ozick

I've just finished a series of Olivia Manning novels. She's best known for two trilogies: Balkan Trilogy and Levant Trilogy. The six novels are continuous and contain the same set of characters. They are based on Manning's experiences in Eastern Europe and Egypt during the Second World War. Each novel is a wonderful picture of the peculiar British expatriate culture and what was happening during the war. She's one of those brilliant women who write very well about domestic relationships. All the books are slim, and it's easy to gallop through them. ~ Sarah Waters

Men like women who write, even though they don't say so. A writer is a foreign country. ~ Marguerite Duras

Books inspire a man to embrace the world or flee it. They start wars and end them. They make the men and women who write and publish them vast fortunes, and nearly as quickly can drive them into madness and despair. Stay away from what you do not fathom from now on ... ~ Matthew Pearl

I think when it comes to women who write or who fancy ourselves 'hip downtown literati', there is a certain contempt for being overly sexual or really looking for boyfriends. We tend to be marginalized as some 'Sex & The City' Carrie Bradshaw chick-lit dummies who just want shoes and a ring. ~ Julie Klausner

Taking us by and large, we're a queer lot
We women who write poetry. And when you think
How few of us there've been, it's queerer still.
I wonder what it is that makes us do it,
Singles us out to scribble down, man-wise,
The fragments of ourselves. Why are we
Already mother-creatures, double-bearing,
With matrices in body and in brain?
I rather think that there is just the reason
We are so sparse a kind of human being;
The strength of forty thousand Atlases
Is needed for our every-day concerns.
There's Sapho, now I wonder what was Sapho.
I know a single slender thing about her:
That, loving, she was like a burning birch-tree
All tall and glittering fire, and that she wrote
Like the same fire caught up to Heaven and held there,
A frozen blaze before it broke and fell.
Ah, me! I wish I could have talked to Sapho,
Surprised her reticences by flinging mine
Into the wind. This tossing off of garments
Which cloud the soul is none too easy doing
With us to-day. But still I think with Sapho
One might accomplish it, were she in the mood
to bare her loveliness of words and tell
The reasons, as she possibly conceived them
of why they are so lovely. Just to know
How she came at them, just watch
The crisp sea sunshine playing on her hair,
And listen, thinking all the while 'twas she
Who spoke and that we two were sisters
Of a strange, i ~ Amy Lowell

I want young women to see my name on 'Avengers Assembled' and to know that there are women who write mainstream superhero comics, and if it is something that interests them, it can be done. ~ Kelly Sue DeConnick

Now, it's undeniably true that male writers (including yours truly) are generally and commercially allowed to write about "girl stuff" without being penalized for doing so. In part this is the same old shit it's always been ... I've said before that men who write mostly about men win prizes for revealing the human condition, while women who write about both men and women are filed away as writing "womens' issues." Likewise, in fantasy, the imprimatur of a dude somehow makes stuff like romance, relationship drama, introspection, and adorable animal companions magically not girly after all.
In a sense, we male fantasists are allowed to be like money launderers for girl cooties."
[Game of Thrones and Invisible Cootie Vectors (blog post, March 30, 2014)] ~ Scott Lynch

Yes I am aware of the rules.
Yes I can totally see how I err the Queen.
Yes it is this very fact of slaying her language.
That gives my soul its melodies. ~ Malebo Sephodi

In any discussion of serial killers, a few notorious names - those of the most prolific killers - always get mentioned. Ted Bundy admitted to killing thirty women, but it could well have been more. Gary Ridgeway, also known as the Green River Killer, was convicted of murdering forty-eight, but later confessed to others. John Wayne Gacy was convicted of killing thirty-three people. Jeffrey Dahmer was convicted of murdering and partially ingesting fifteen people. David Berkowitz, New York City's "Son of Sam," shot and killed six people. Less well known but significant are Dennis Rader, who killed ten people in Wichita, Kansas, and Aileen Wuornos, portrayed by Charlize Theron in the film Monster, who killed six men. Wayne Williams was convicted of killing only two men, but he is believed to have killed anywhere from twenty-three to twenty-nine children in Atlanta. Robert Hansen confessed to four murders but is suspected of more than seventeen. Juan Corona was convicted of murdering twenty-five people. Their crimes are all horrific, and the number of victims is heartbreaking. But all these most notorious serial killers stand in the shadow of Dr. Kermit Gosnell. Strangely, Gosnell appears in no list we have found of known U.S. serial killers, though he is the biggest of them all. In reality, Kermit Gosnell deserves the top spot on any list of serial murderers. He's earned it. ~ Ann McElhinney

The virtue of female slaves is wholly at the mercy of irresponsible tyrants, and women are bought and sold in our slave markets, to gratify the brutal lust of those who bear the name of Christians. ~ Sarah Moore Grimke

Women who make a house a home make a far greater contribution to society than those who command large armies or stand at the head of impressive corporations. ~ Gordon B. Hinckley

And what of the men who made love to the woman who became La Llorona? Did they every cry for their children? It doesn't seem fair to have only her suffer, only her crying and doing penance. Perhaps a man should run with her, and in our legends we would call him "El Mero Chingón," he who screwed up everything. Then maybe the tale of love and passion and the insanity it can bring will be complete. Yes, I think someday I will write that story. ~ Rudolfo Anaya

But women are always attracted to power. I do not think there could ever be a conqueror so bloody that most women would not willingly lie with him in the hope of bearing a son who would be every bit as ferocious as the father. ~ Gore Vidal

For each of us, there comes a time to let go. You will know when that time has come. When you have done all that you can do, it is time to detach. Deal with your feelings. Face your fears about losing control. Gain control of yourself and your responsibilities. Free others to be who they are. In so doing, you will set yourself free. ACTIVITY Is there an event or person in your life that you are trying to control? Why? Write a few paragraphs about it. ~ Melody Beattie

An attractive, elegant, slim woman. The sort of woman she never thought it was possible for her to be. She had become one of those women, those other women, who had seemed too perfectly put together to be real. ~ Liane Moriarty

I am a deeply uncertain individual. I often find myself acting like a fool to make the people around me laugh. When they're laughing, they're not watching me quite as closely. I smile to put people at ease. But what if I opened my mouth one day, spoke my actual thoughts, and the people glared at my opinions? What if they thought me disgusting or frightening or ugly because of my words? Would you keep your lips shut for the rest of your life to not face that judgment? Just for the sake of someone else's comfort? For these strangers, who I will never know? If I can't speak then I'll write. These strangers, whose opinions crush me, will be forced to listen. Because when they read my words those words will make a home within their heads. They may even end up using my own opinions against me. But at least I'll be hidden behind the pages of a book. ~ F.K. Preston

I was inspired to write this book by those who are sceptical of the power of freedom to change the world. ~ Natan Sharansky

I never tried to write for other people. I liked people who had problems I might have, because we all have insecurities, regrets. I like heroes who were not 100-percent perfect, who things to take care of. ~ Stan Lee

How far have you walked for men who've never held your feet in their laps?
how often have you bartered with bone, only to sell yourself short?
why do you find the unavailable so alluring?
where did it begin? what went wrong? and who made you feel so worthless?
if they wanted you, wouldn't they have chosen you?
all this time, you were begging for love silently, thinking they couldn't hear you, but they smelt it on you, you must have known that they could taste the desperate on your skin?
and what about the others that would do anything for you, why did you make them love you until you could not stand it?
how are you both of these women, both flighty and needful?
where did you learn this, to want what does not want you?
where did you learn this, to leave those that want to stay? ~ Warsan Shire

The women who file for bankruptcy played by all the rules, but they are still in economic freefall. ~ Elizabeth Warren

Practice listening to your intuition, your inner voice; ask questions; be curious; see what you see; hear what you hear; and then act upon what you know to be true. These intuitive powers were given to your soul at birth. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

An obvious example of this reverse causation would be pregnant women, who are driven to fatten by hormonal changes. This hormonal drive induces hunger and lethargy as a result. In the context of evolution, these expanded fat stores would assure the availability of the necessary calories to nurse the infants after birth and assure the viability of the offspring. ~ Gary Taubes

Those mausoleums of inactive masculinity are places for men who prefer armchairs to women. ~ V.S. Pritchett

The problem facing humanity today is not a political problem; it's not a financial problem; it's not a military problem. It's obviously a spiritual problem. That is, it has to do with what we believe to be true about who we are, where we are, why we are where we are, and what are we doing on the Earth. What is the purpose of life itself? What we need right now are leaders or models, people who will stand up and not only help to write a cultural story, but help to model it in the way that they interact with each other. ~ Neale Donald Walsch

This was supposed to be yesterday. I was sitting on the Cardiff/London train, supposedly about to write this very column, and realising something quite terrible. My head was entirely empty. A vast echoing void. Bigger on the inside, but with nothing in it. You could drop a pebble in my brain and wait for an hour to hear it land. No actually, you couldn't - that would be aggressive and unhelpful, so keep your damn pebbles to yourself. ~ Steven Moffat

I think we think that parenthood is confined to the country of mothers, but I think a lot of the men I've spoken to and the men who have read my books - I've been surprised by this actually - have a fierce attachment to being parents and to being fathers. And just as we, a lot of women I know, want this, men too want to pass down what they have to pass down. ~ Jennifer Gilmore

People who are more than casually interested in computers should have at least some idea of what the underlying hardware is like. Otherwise the programs they write will be pretty weird. ~ Donald Knuth

The idea is that the woman's heritage and background are just as important as the man's. Many women see taking a man's name as a gesture of symbolic oppression. It's like saying to the woman, 'Who you are as a person isn't as important as who I am. ~ Rhoda Janzen

The opinion I have of the generality of women
who appear to me as children to whom I would rather give a sugar plum than my time, forms a barrier against matrimony which I rejoice in. ~ John Keats

Brothers always. Balthazar is with us too. We make this work,' Finnikin said fiercely. 'We bring peace to these kingdoms. We deserve it. Our women do. All of us have lost too much, Froi. We've lost the joy of being children. Let's not take that from Jasmina and Tariq and those who come after them ~ Melina Marchetta

I was part of the first generation of girls and women to be educated and go to grammar school even if we didn't have much money. Then that generation went, 'OK, great', and went into medicine or the police, and hit this wall of discrimination from older men who hadn't caught up. ~ Helen Mirren

I think women who lead full lives are better mothers. ~ Jada Pinkett Smith

Elsie, who had a lot of energy and no shame ... she seduced me. It was not a success, from Elsie's point of view, because the orgasm for women was just coming into general popularity then, and she didn't have one. ~ Robertson Davies

Women are the only people I am afraid of who I never thought would hurt me ~ Abraham Lincoln

A storm in Scotland was like nothing she'd ever experienced in London. Here, the elements felt alive, sentient. This storm was a raging monster that had grown in fury since yesterday.
Sometimes, she thought Scotland was more than a country, more than a rough and magnificent land with a border created by men, written on a map, and defended for hundreds of years. Scotland was almost a living creature that could turn and bite your hand if you didn't speak about it in fond and loving tones.
When she walked the hills and glens surrounding Drumvagen, she sometimes felt like she was being watched. Not by living inhabitants, but those who'd gone before, proud men and women who hated the English and now hovered over their land to protest her appearance.
For all her imagination, she didn't believe in the hundreds of folktales Brianag told the children. The trees weren't alive; they were simply trees. Brownies didn't do chores for obedient children. Sea creatures in the shape of horses didn't bedevil the coast.
Yet something about this storm was otherworldly, as if God were punishing them. ~ Karen Ranney

I have tried to live with women who share a similar sensibility to mine, with predictably disastrous consequences, but the opposite route seems every bit as hopeless. ~ Nick Hornby

Doesn't it make you wonder about your own sexual identity, not to mention your sanity, that the two women you love are, respectively, a virtual woman existing only in the transient ansible connections between computers and a woman whose soul is in fact that of a man who is the husband of your mother? ~ Orson Scott Card

Muslim women must stand up and speak out about who we are, what we believe and where we are going. I think we need to know that our counterparts in the west are also willing to listen and reciprocate. ~ Queen Rania Of Jordan

What's the point of changing who you are in order to impress a woman, when your intention is to return to who you were, a person she was never attracted to in the first place? ~ Richelle E. Goodrich