c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
What I mean is, lots of time you don't know what interests you most till you start talking about something that doesn't interest you most. I mean you can't help it sometimes. What I think is, you're supposed to leave somebody alone if he's at least being interesting and he's getting all excited about something. I like it when somebody gets excited about something. It's nice.
— J.D. Sallinger
In Nepal, the quality of conversation is much more important than accuracy of the content. Maybe we get overexcited about information in England?
— Jane Wilson-Howarth, A Glimpse of Eternal Snows: A Journey of Love and Loss in the Himalayas
In order to be company he must display a certain mental activity. But it need not be of a high order. Indeed it might be argued the lower the better. Up to a point. The lower the order of mental activity the better the company. Up to a point.
— Samuel Beckett, Company
He was through with this conversation. As a rule, they tended to avoid questions like "How sane are we?" and "Do our lives have meaning?" The need for avoidance was acute and apparent to both of them.
— Michael Chabon, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
There was no necessity for either to have the last word. For the first word became the only word of their romantic conversation.
— David Paul Kirkpatrick, The Address Of Happiness
With some people there is easy conversation and not enough time in one meal to get out everything you want to tell her--all the things you didn't know you'd been holding in until you're suddenly confessing to Facebook-stalking ex-boyfriends and how nerdy you are for coveting the iPad--and with others there is that subtle but heavy weight of constantly trying to think of what you might say next to avoid an uncomfortable silence.
— Rachel Bertsche, MWF Seeking BFF: My Yearlong Search For A New Best Friend
You never listen to me anymore. Before, if I was talking to you, you would always listen. But now you have no time to even talk to me.'Yeah... Has Keaty told you not to eat the Stew?''Richard!'I frowned 'What?''You are not listening to me!''… Oh. Well I'm sorry. I've got a lot on my mind.''Not me.''Huh?''I am not on your mind.''Uh... of course you are.''I am not' she poked me in the ribs. 'I think you do not love me anymore.'I looked at her in astonishment '… Are you serious?''Very serious' she said petulantly'But... I mean... do we have to talk about this right now?''Yes. It must be now. Etienne is not here, and maybe soon I will never see you agai...''Francoise!' I hissed. 'Keep it down!''Maybe I should keep it down but maybe I should not. In the dope field, when I would not be quiet, you pushed me to the ground and held me tightly'. She giggled. 'It was very exciting'.
— Alex Garland, The Beach
I like the way you secretly send me a direct message when we're in the middle of a conversation.
— Ariel Seraphino
So you have something important to say, so you interrupt an exciting conversation already in progress just to let us know you have nothing to contribute to the discussion. Umm....
— Troy Ragland
That which is worth telling is not worth having.
— Raheel Farooq
one wonders how much real conversation there is when one party does not, in many districts, have to contend for the votes of minorities, and the other can only elevate minorities into positions of power when the political wind is blowing in its direction.
— Garrance Franke-Ruta
Surely only boring people went in for conversations consisting of questions and answers. The art of true conversation consisted in the play of minds.
— Ved Mehta, All for Love
She said one thing and I said another and the next thing I knew I wanted to spend the rest of my life in the middle of that conversation.
— Hank Moody
We don't talk, we hold forth. We don't converse, we expound.
— J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey
Weird people don't care if they're weird. They are the most entertaining to converse with because nothing is off-limits.
— Donna Lynn Hope
Are you really going back there with me?" I ask."Hell yes I am. Your wish is finally coming true. I will see your vagina. Plus, I really want to see the look on that woman's face when she gets a peek at your plethora of pubes. Your copious curls, your abundant bush, the wild mane that if it sees a spark will start a forest fire," she states."Are you finished?" I ask irritably."I think so. But give me five minutes and I might be able to get one more in.
— Tara Sivec, Troubles and Treats
Chester nods all the way through this, but does not rudely interrupt Randy as a younger nerd would. Your younger nerd takes offense quickly when someone near him begins to utter declarative sentences, because he reads into it an ssertion that he, the nerd, does not already know the information being imparted. But your older nerd has more self-confidence, and besides, understands that frequently people need to think out loud. And highly advanced nerds will furthermore understand that uttering declarative sentences whose contents are already known to all present is part of the social process of making conversation and therefore should not be construed as aggression under any circumstances.
— Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon
I don't believe that." She seems like suck a force,this reasonable girl who kills with a turn of her fingers. She would have left all this behind, if she had the chance. "I honestly don't remember," she sighs "I don't think I was strong in life. Now it seems like I loved every moment, that every breath was charmed and crisp." she clasps her hands comically to her chest and breaths in deep through her nose, then blows it out in a huff. "I probably didn't. For all my dreams and fancies, I can't recall being...what would you call it? Perky?
— Kendare Blake, Anna Dressed in Blood
You have to wait together - for a week, for a year, for a lifetime, before the final intimate conversation may be attained ... and exhausted. So that ... That in effect was love.
— Ford Madox Ford, Parade's End
what a sad pair we are," she said. "Surely we can manage a conversation on a topic other than our respective terrible evenings.
— Julia Quinn, The Duke and I
I particularly value conversations which are meetings on the borderline of what I understand and what I don't, with people who are different from myself.
— Theodore Zeldin
Every person has something meaningful to say in the conversation of life.
— Bryant McGill, Voice of Reason
Just because you talk about it or advocate for one position doesn't mean you care more. Just because someone doesn't talk about it and advocates a different position doesn't mean they care less.
— Donna Lynn Hope
The conversation was mesmerizing, not for its content but for the cadences of the talk, the rhythm we fell into when we were alone, now as before. Every conversation between friends or lovers creates its own easy or awkward rhythms, hidden talk that runs like a subterranean river under even the most banal exchange.
— Robert Charles Wilson, Spin
But before she tells you anything." I glared at him suspiciously."your seed..."Tsaeb winced."What the hell are you talking about?""your...well, your seed. You know, you have to knock her up.
— J.A. Redmerski, Dirty Eden
[I]t is things that make us happy when conversation begins to reveal itself as a paltry substitute.
— Rick Moody, Demonology: Stories
Your narrative may fail to grip if you haven't taken any care to find out how well or badly your audience member is faring (or feeling).
— Christopher Hitchens, Mortality
It's basically the same in all periods of societies. If you belong to the majority, you can avoid thinking about lots of troubling things.''And those troubling things are all you /can/ think about when you're one of the few.''That's about the size of it,' she said mournfully. 'But maybe, if you're in a situation like that, you learn to think for yourself.''Yes, but maybe what you end up thinking for yourself /about/ is all those troubling things.
— Haruki Murakami, 1Q84
He had never imagined so clearly the consequences of mailing a letter—the impossibility of retrieving it from the iron mouth of the box; the inevitability if its steady progress through the postal system; the passing from bag to bag and postman to postman until a lone man in a van pulls up to the door and pushes a small pile through the letterbox. It seemed suddenly horrible that one's words could not be taken back, one's thoughts allowed none of the remediation of speaking face to face.
— Helen Simonson, Major Pettigrew's Last Stand
...I only told you about it because I thought I might get a laugh out of you for once even if it wasn't the truth, Jessie. Things don't have to be true to talk about 'em, you know.
— Marsha Norman, 'night, Mother
I dwell in possibility…
— Emily Dickinson
Do not think it impossible just because it has never happened.- Friar Tuck
— Stephen R. Lawhead, Tuck
It may have happened, it may not have happened but it could have happened.
— Mark Twain
When you throw everything up in the air anything becomes possible.
— Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses
A disciple...can never imitate his guide's steps. You have your own way of living your life, of dealing with problems, and of winning. Teaching is only demonstrating that it is possible. Learning is making it possible for yourself.
— Paulo Coelho, The Pilgrimage
Anything at all is possible. Some things are unlikely. Some things will never happen. But they always could, at any time.
— Ashly Lorenzana
We have this history of impossible solutions to insoluble problems.
— Will Eisner
Anything can happen: anything. Or nothing. Who can say? The world, monstrous, is made that way, and in the end consumes us all. Who am I, administrated or no, to have the audacity to survive it?
— Brian Evenson, Fugue State
Coordinating thereEvents and objects with remote eventsAnd vanished objects. Making ornamentsOf accidents and possibilities.
— Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire
The possibilities of pleasure seemed that morning so enormous and so various that to have only a moth's part in life, and a day moth's at that, appeared a hard fate, and his zest in enjoying his meagre opportunities to the full, pathetic. He flew vigorously to one corner of his compartment, and, after waiting there a second, flew across to the other. What remained for him but to fly to a third corner and then to a fourth? That was all he could do, in spite of the size of the downs, the width of the sky, the far-off smoke of houses, and the romantic voice, now and then, of a steamer out at sea. What he could do he did.
— Virginia Woolf, Street Haunting
As long as you’re trying to be someone else, or putting on some act or behavior someone else taught you, you have no possibility of truly reaching people. The most valuable thing you have to give people is yourself. No matter what you think you’re selling, what you’re really offering is you.” (p.92)
— Bob Burg and John David Mann, The Go Giver: A Little Story About A Powerful Business Idea
All things lie dark in possibility.
— William Saroyan
Curious, the pleasure it gives me to annoy practitioners of force. Do I actually want this Herr Benjamenta to punish me? Do I have reckless instincts? Everything is possible, everything, even the most sordid and undignified things.
— Robert Walser, Jakob von Gunten
My dad said that the impossible is only impossible if you don’t even try. So I want to try.
— Ashley Poston, Geekerella
It’s been a long, rocky life, with plenty of possibility but too much human ugliness.
— Gregory Maguire, Out of Oz
I know what theory... the possibility of impossibility.
— Deyth Banger
If not careful... there is possibility getting spoiled.
— Deyth Banger
It is all new and all the same. A hundred years. A day. Ten thousand moons. For them, each day indeed is brand new, full of possibility, the unknown: a wonderland.
— Lorna Jane Cook, Outside Wonderland
It's not so easy... it's not possible.
— Deyth Banger
Listen, Sam, and everyone, you need to know something so it won’t freak you out: Pack Leader can speak. I mean, human words. Like Smart-Girl Barbie there was saying, he’s some kind of mutant or whatever. I know you think I’m probably crazy.”She had Hermit Jim’s tin cup now and used it to scoop up another helping of wonderful, wonderful pudding. Blondie—Astrid—was opening a can of fruit cocktail.“What do you know about the FAYZ?” Astrid asked.Lana stopped eating and stared at her. “The what?”Astrid shrugged and looked embarrassed. “That’s what people are calling it. The Fallout Alley Youth Zone. FAYZ.”“What does that mean?”“Have you seen the barrier?”She nodded. “Oh, yeah. I’ve seen the barrier. I touched the barrier, which, by the way, is not a good idea.”Sam said, “As far as we can tell, it goes clear around in a big circle. Or maybe a sphere. We think the center is the power plant. It seems like a ten-mile radius from there, you know, twenty miles across.”“Circumference of 62.83 miles, with an area of 314.159 square miles,” Astrid said.“Point 159,” Quinn echoed from his corner. “That’s important.”“It’s basically pi,” Astrid said. “You know, 3.14159265…. Okay, I’ll stop.”Lana hadn’t stopped being hungry. She took a scoop of the fruit cocktail. “Sam, you think the power plant caused it?”Sam shrugged, and then he hesitated, surprised. Lana guessed that he felt no pain in his shoulder. “No one knows. All of a sudden every single person over the age of fourteen disappears and there’s this barrier and people…animals…”Lana slowly absorbed this new information. “You mean all the adults? They’re gone?”“Poof,” Quinn said. “They ditched. They blinked out. They vacated. They took the off-ramp. They cut a hole. They emigrated. Adults and teenagers. Nothing left but kids.”“I’ve done all I can to strengthen the door,” Edilio announced. “But all I have is nails. Someone can break it in eventually.”“Maybe they didn’t all ditch,” Lana said. “Maybe we did.”Astrid said, “That’s definitely one of the possibilities, not that it makes any real difference. It’s effectively the same thing.
— Michael Grant, Gone
Endless possibilities is hidden inside the fog of life.
— Tanmaya Guru
Being nice is state of "Probability", not a state of "possibility".
— Deyth Banger
Never tell a young person that anything cannot be done. God may have been waiting centuries for someone ignorant enough of the impossible to do that very thing.
— G. M. Trevelyan
There is possibility of making you suffer even and pain. There is a way!
— Deyth Banger
Cooties, doesn't show possibility shows impossibility.
— Deyth Banger
In life and love, there are no impossibilities.
— Camille Lucy, The (Real) Love Experiment: Explore Love, Relationships & the Self
If there is possbility of the ability, I will choose flexibility.
— Deyth Banger
The poor will look for many excuses why an idea can not be born, but the rich will also look for one excuse why an idea can be born.
— Auliq Ice
A thought comes into her head: that lately she doesn't ask herself what is possible, but rather what possibilities remain.
— Carol Shields, The Stone Diaries
A sensible man may fear certain possibilities, but don’t let fear turn possibility into certainty.
— Mark  Lawrence, Prince of Fools
You know not what you are capable of doing; you cannot sound the ocean of thought within you. You must labor, keep at it, and dig deep and long before you will begin to realize much. Be inactive - mourn because you were not created a giant in intellect, and you will die a fool.
— L.G. Abell, A Mother's Book of Traditional Househould Skills
If you shatter the fish bowl so that everything is possible you don't have freedom you have paralysis. Everybody needs a fishbowl.
— Barry Schwartz
Ensuring possibility is kept alive is imperative.
— Steven Redhead, Life Is Simply A Game
Possibility is limitless.
— Daniel S. Fletcher, Jackboot Britain
Where there's possibility there is also hope.
— Gareth P. Jones, No True Echo
Problems, obstacles and difficulties are in themselves not a sufficient reason for a person to suffer defeat. It is possible to overcome any obstacle
— Sunday Adelaja
Empower your possibility with the power of your promise.
— Tony Curl
You can call a thing possible which is still to happen, but not which has already taken place.
— Waheed Ibne Musa, Johnny Fracture
A man cannot despair if he can imagine a better life, and if he can enact something of its possibility. It is only when I am ensnarled in the meaningless ordeals and the ordeals of meaninglessness, of which our public and political life is now so productive, that I lose the awareness of something better, and feel the despair of having come to the dead end of possibility.
— Wendell Berry
Possibility means "freedom". The measure of freedom enters into the concept of man. That the objective possibilities exist for people not to die of hunder and that people do die of hunger, has its importance, or so one would have thought. But the existence of the objective conditions, of possibilities or of freedom is not yet enough: it is necessary to "know" them, and know how to use them.
— Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks
Ideas are God pulling up the frame of the curtain to show us what can be.
— Bidemi Mark-Mordi
Fear is the possibility of freedom.
— Peter Stamm, All Days Are Night
Hope is when against all odds a tiny flame keeps burning for the possibility.
— Tilicia Haridat
A minimum put to good use is enough for anything.
— Jules Verne, Around the World in Eighty Days
Is it possible not to ever know your type--not to even know you have a type--until quite suddenly you do?
— Jennifer E. Smith, The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight
What was a shadow, after all, but a shape in the moving world reduced to a projection of possibilities?
— Yoon Ha Lee, Conservation of Shadows
Possibilities lies in a daring dream.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
Many of the fundamental physical constants-which as far as one could see, God could have given any value He liked-are in fact very precised adjusted, or fine-tuned, to produce the only kind of Universe that makes our existence possible.
— Arthur C. Clarke, Tales from Planet Earth
Every meaningful success I have accomplished was made possible by love.
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
We're so young. We can't, we MUST not loose this sense of possibility because in the end, it's all we have.
— Marina Keegan, The Opposite of Loneliness: Essays and Stories
Archive material is a fabulous starting point - individual documents are like signposted roads, heading to a variety of intriguing possibilities.
— Sara Sheridan
There was no way I could be confident! But it was obvious that the patient will die if I don't do something!"-Dr. Honma
— Osamu Tezuka
What happens slowly carries in each part the possibility of returning to what came before. In an accident everything is simultaneous, sudden, irreversible. It means this: no going back.
— Rachel Kushner, The Flamethrowers
GOD Can Use ANYTHING To Do ANYTHING.
— Cyc Jouzy
I believe in a world of possibilities.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
Unlimited possibilities: Hope
— Lailah Gifty Akita
I believe in unlimited possibilities.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
The morning felt like a mixing bowl just waiting for its ingredients; there was a sense of possibility to it, a promise of something more to come.
— Jennifer E. Smith, This Is What Happy Looks Like
There's also a possibility that the landlord is in there right now, wearing women's undergarments. Or a drug addict is inside stealing jewelry.Or a boatload of recent Chinese immigrants without a television watching Russia play Finland in hockey and placing bets over beer. You have no idea what's behind that door. You can't just pick the options within your field of vision. Reality comes from everywhere. At best, you can narrow down the likelihoods. But in the end, it's not a matter of deduction. It's a matter of fact. One bullet will kill you if you're stupid or unlucky. So at least don't be stupid
— Derek B. Miller, Norwegian by Night
Insurance companies sell what might happen tomorrow. Historians sell what certainly happened yesterday.
— Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Write there. In the weak spot of impossibility.
— Lysa TerKeurst
It is good to know that out there, in a forest in the world, there is a cabin where something is possible...
— Sylvain Tesson, Dans les forêts de Sibérie
It's like I am glimpsing the possibility of living in a different way. I wonder whether it would be an easier life - less choked with misunderstandings and disappointment.
— Chrissie Perry, Whisper
As pathetic as it was, she'd rather hold on to the possibility of something perfect than be hit with the reality of nothing much.
— Francine Pascal, Payback
Don’t let psychological warfare from an advertisement campaign blind you from the truth of your beauty, possibility, worthiness, and purpose.
— Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience
Chase every rung of possibility, and you still get absolutely nowhere.
— Jodi Picoult, My Sister's Keeper
In their faces--plenty of them were handsome, but ruined--I've seen the remnants of who they almost succeeded in being but failed to be, before becoming themselves.
— Richard Ford, Canada
It could have been different," I say, almost under my breath. If I'd kissed Indie again after she kissed me. If I hadn't known Cassia before I met Indie."But it's not," Indie says, and she's right.
— Ally Condie, Reached
The truth is that we live in a world that diminishes possibilities.
— Lionel Suggs
One hundred eighty days, Aislinn. Seth's been gone for one hundred eighty days, and I've watched you try to pretend it doesn't hurt for every one of them. Can't I try to make you happy?
— Melissa Marr
These times are unfriendly toward Worlds alternative to this one
— Thomas Pynchon, Mason & Dixon
We are becoming the men we wanted to marry
— Gloria Steinem
Maybe the princess could save herself.""That sounds like a pretty good story too.
— Marissa Meyer, Fairest
I am confident, I am capable, and I will not wait to be rescued by a woodsman or a hunter.
— Jackson Pearce, Sisters Red
Hey, look at me! Look at me! Look at me! And...look at me. Will he think I'm sexy enough? Will he find me wholesome enough? Am I fuckable? Is he allergic to feathers?!
— Emilie Autumn
Femininity is depicted as weakness, the sapping of strength, yet masculinity is so fragile that apparently even the slightest brush with the feminine destroys it.
— Gwen Sharp
I have a brain and a uterus, and I use both. 
— Patricia Schroeder
Mama always said barefoot and pregnant was not my style. She knew.
— Barbara Kingsolver, The Bean Trees
We must raise both the ceiling and the floor.
— Sheryl Sandberg, Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead
I sink down into my body as into a swamp, fenland, where only I know the footing….I’m a cloud, congealed around a central object, the shape of a pear, which is hard and more real than I am and glows red within its translucent wrapping. Inside it is a space, huge as the sky at night and dark and curved like that, though black-red rather than black.
— Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale
...women, brave as stars at dawn
— Edwidge Danticat, Breath, Eyes, Memory
It can be really painful to have to face how fucked up shit is and how scared people are…of being alive. Scared of things that are amazing. Scared of things that aren’t like television or aren’t dead. A lot of people can’t deal with three-dimensional human beings, they only know how to deal with other products — they see themselves as other products. When the world only treats you like a dot on a marketing scheme, you can learn to treat yourself and other people like that.
— Kathleen Hanna
This book is written in blood.Is it written entirely in blood?No, some of it is written in tears. Are the blood and tears all mine?Yes, they have been in the past, but the future is a different ma
— Joanna Russ, The Female Man
Unlike Joseph her husband, Mary is neither upright nor pious, but she is not blame for this, the blame lies with the language she speaks if not with the men who invented it, because that language has no feminine form for the words upright and pious.
— José Saramago, The Gospel According to Jesus Christ
Fundamentally, I started writing to save my life. Yes, my own life first. I see the same impulse in my students-the dark, the queer, the mixed-blood, the violated-turning to the written page with a relentless passion, a drive to avenge their own silence, invisibility, and erasure as living, innately expressive human beings.
— Cherríe L. Moraga
What can we learn from women like Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday that we may not be able to learn from Ida B. Wells, Anna Julia Cooper, and Mary Church Terrell? If we were beginning to appreciate the blasphemies of fictionalized blues women - especially their outrageous politics of sexuality - and the knowledge that might be gleaned from their lives about the possibilities of transforming gender relations within black communities, perhaps we also could benefit from a look at the artistic contributions of the original blues women.
— Angela Y. Davis
Horseman. I know you were born back when women were thought of as little more than brood mares and slaves, but it's the twenty-first century, and we can do anything a man does.
— Larissa Ione, Immortal Rider
A writer will write with or without a movement; but at the same time, for Chicano, lesbian, gay and feminist writers-anybody writing against the grain of Anglo misogynist culture-political movements are what have allowed our writing to surface from the secret places in our notebooks into the public sphere.
— Cherríe L. Moraga
The Girl Scouts allow homosexuals and atheists to join their ranks, and they have become a pro-abortion feminist training corps. If the Girl Scouts of America can't get back to teaching real character, perhaps it will be time to look for our cookies elsewhere.
— Hans Zeiger
Additionally, many widows took over family shops or businesses- and, not uncommonly, ran them better than their dead husbands. Y.pestis [black death germ] turns out to have been something of a feminist.
— John   Kelly, The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of All Time
Her remark laid bare not only the reality - not enough comic opportunities for women in Hollywood - but also the ideology that created and perpetuated that reality. It was right there in the sentence structure, easily parsed: 'All the scripts are for men and you play 'the girl'' suggests that the scripts were handed down by the clean, white hand of God. It banished 'the girl' to the sidelines to perform her girly insignificance on command. It was right there in the dismissive way her comment was received as clickbait all over the Internet. 'Borat's Babe Plans a Hollywood Sex Revolution,' one headline announced, not only missing the point but mocking and dismissing it. Women's experience in its entirety seemed contained in that remark, not to mention several of the stages of feminist grief: the shock of waking up to the fact that the world does not also belong to you; the shame at having been so naive as to have thought it did; the indignation, depression, and despair that follow this realization; and, finally, the marshaling of the handy coping mechanisms, compartmentalization, pragmatism, and diminished expectations.
— Carina Chocano, You Play the Girl: On Playboy Bunnies, Stepford Wives, Train Wrecks, & Other Mixed Messages
Let us remind our poor men folk in deed and song:There are two types of men in this womanly world:Those who know they are weak.Those who think they are strong.
— Philip Strax
So what is transgressive in the practice of this secret Tantra is the gesture not to elide the difference that women present. What does this mean? That women represent not merely objects, property, or the possibility of sexual gratification, but an opening point to the possibility of difference as the subjectivity of the other. . .Rather, a recognition of the difference women present offers the possibility of a choice not to objectify women. This recognition recodes gendered relations inscribing woman discursively in the place of the subject.
— Loriliai Biernacki, Renowned Goddess of Desire: Women, Sex, and Speech in Tantra
I would suggest that especially in the differential of images that arise, in the inflections that we find within the representations of women we may also recover a subjectivity for women. For this reason also I am specifically interested in bringing to light other models for women’s roles, models that upset business as usual and offer a greater diversity of possibilities for the easy we can imagine women.
— Loriliai Biernacki, Renowned Goddess of Desire: Women, Sex, and Speech in Tantra
I would suggest that especially in the differential of images that arise, in the inflections that we find within the representations of women we may also recover a subjectivity for women. For this reason also I am specifically interested in bringing to light other models for women’s roles, models that upset business as usual and offer a greater diversity of possibilities for the ways we can imagine women.
— Loriliai Biernacki, Renowned Goddess of Desire: Women, Sex, and Speech in Tantra
…if divinity, which is the goddess, is intrinsic to her being, something she caries around with her all the time, something she is, then her status in general shifts. Then one would need to be vigilant, constantly maintaining an attitude of listening to her, as ordinary woman, which affords a shift in the normative discourse between the genders and that allows for a recognition of her as a subject, as a person to whom one should listen.
— Loriliai Biernacki, Renowned Goddess of Desire: Women, Sex, and Speech in Tantra
No, no, my good knight, do not fear for me. The fire is mine. I am Daenerys Stormborn, daughter of dragons, bride of dragons, mother of dragons, don't you see? Don't you SEE?
— George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones
There’s no need to apologise, Justine,' he said tautly. 'No need at all.''Good, because I didn’t mean to. It’s a habit with females, that’s all, saying sorry all the time when there’s absolutely no need. . .
— Miranda Lee, The Millionaire's Mistress
She tried to ignore that, this close to the man, he had the overpowering chemical scent of a manly shower gel. That sort that normally came in a black bottle and was called something like SHOCK or EXCITE or BLUNT TRAUMA.
— Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven Boys
I thought all men were the enemy," he said as a tease. I narrowed my eyes. "Well who exactly do you think teaches little girls to see other little girls as the enemy, when in fact it's all just a lie to make sure we never consolidate our talents and rise to power?" I watched Lock's expression brighten and I changed the subject before he said something annoying, like how lovely I looked when I ranted about the patriarchy.
— Heather Petty
Oh, why did he slap her when she’s a widow, and that annoyed her even more. She said she should not have been slapped because she is a full human being, not because she doesn’t have a husband to speak for her.
— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah
Occasionally I’ll be sitting somewhere and I’ll be listening to someone perhaps not saying the kindest things about me. And I’ll look down at my hand and I’ll sort of pinch my skin to make sure it still has the requisite thickness I know Eleanor Roosevelt expects me to have.
— Hilary Clinton
We should be able to say, "This is my truth," and have that truth stand without a hundred clamoring voices shouting, giving the impression that multiple truths cannot co-exist. Because at some point, doesn't privilege become beside the point?
— Roxanne Gay
I used to try to be cool. I said things that I didn't believe about other people, and celebrities, and myself; I wrote mean jokes for cheap, "edgy" laughs; I neglected good friendships for shallow one; I insisted I wasn't a feminist; I nodded along with casual misogyny in hopes that shitty dudes would like me.
— Lindy West, Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman
I've spent a lifetime in challenge. There's no way in which you can create any meaningful change unless you do that.
— Bella Abzug
I rarely meet men in real life as extraordinary as ones on film, and rarely see women on film as extraordinary as ones I know in real life
— Jen Richards
I was thinking about the need to have a feminist bookstore, a place for women to buy books about women. Because in those days, if you would go to a regular bookstore and ask about books for women, one, they would have almost nothing, two, they wouldn't pay attention, or they would look at you like you were a weird person.
— Kristen Hogan
Do you have the tubes to ask me out or not?
— Charli Frisky, My Ex-Boyfriend Is A Piece of Cr*p ...And Other Whimsical Stories
If we do something over and over again, it becomes normal. If we see the same thing over and over again, it becomes normal.
— Chimimanda Ngozi Adichie
You are not only fighting for your own rights, you are also fighting for the rights of the next generations of women.Your strength today will determine their fate tomorrow.
— ليلى المطوع - layla almotawa
And yet the idea that women are human beings remains news, a message that requires constant, clear, and artful reinforcement in a world that continues to undermine the confidence and abilities of girls and women. On the day that the intelligence and talents of women are fully honored and employed, the human community and planet itself will benefit in ways we can only begin to imagine.
— Anita Diamant, The Red Tent
Does feminist mean large unpleasant person who'll shout at you or someone who believes women are human beings? To me it's the latter, so I sign up
— Margaret Atwood
When men start affording more rights to women, maybe we'll be nicer to the ones we don't like. But for now, I know that I myself am too busy trying to preserve my rights and faculties to take care of a man's fragile ego.
— Leanna Renee Hieber, The Eterna Files
Bourdieu’s concept of symbolic violence, which is ‘violence that is exercised upon a social agent with his or her complicity’...provides an explanation of how social inequalities can continue largely unabated. Within this perspective, individual subjects are subjected to various forms of violence, such as being treated unfairly or denied resources, or are limited in their social mobility and aspirations, but they do not tend to see it that way; rather it is misrecognised by individual subjects as the natural order of things. Gender domination in the patriarchal family is an example of symbolic violence in operation. Through habitus formation in this context, women were often confined emotionally, socially, economically and physically and the perception that women were inferior to men in the home and more generally in society was perpetuated. Women’s misrecognition of this violence as ‘natural’ and ‘normal’ gendered relations in the world led to their being complicit in reinscribing through their daily practices, their own domination.
— kerry H Robinson
He doesn't need to tend her, because she hunts her own prey. He doesn't need to shield her, because she kills her own enemies. He doesn't need to look for her, because she's always at his side.
— Kate Quinn, Lady of the Eternal City
I think the HeforShe campaign is a fantastic initiative, and of course men and boys should be involved in seeking equality for women, because we are people, and you are people, and people should help out other people. I think more engagement too could be found from addressing the problems males face from gender inequality, because while the problems girls and women face from sexism are much more violent, I sometimes think the pressures on boys and men are more poisonous. If we think about it clearly, we see that the gender inequalities men face often lead to the gender inequalities women face. For instance, domestic abuse is often about a man’s assertion of power and control, but if he didn’t think he needed those things in the first place, would the abuse ever happen? Similarly, rape culture is often about male entitlement, but that sense of entitlement comes from what we as a society tell men about their gender, and what it means.
— Abigail Tarttelin
I have a suspicion - and hear me out, 'cause this is a rough one - I have a suspicion that the definition of "crazy" in show business is a woman who keeps talking even after no one wants to fuck her anymore.  The only person I can think of that has escaped the "crazy" moniker is Betty White, which, obviously, is because people still want to have sex with her.
— Tina Fey
Being a full-time feminist means that every day I make a choice to make equality a part of my life, mind, and behavior. I set out purposefully to support women, to create a dialogue with men, and to interject when I see ignorance and misunderstanding. For me this has meant that in my work I often choose to share my financial gains with women (although I do also employ men regularly, to film my music videos or produce my songs with my band Girlboy), and when I see a woman working, or reaching for her ambitions, I like to show my support. In my romantic relationships with men, this has meant when there is misunderstanding, I take the time to think about why that could be, and to discuss whatever problems we face. Thinking about the influence of the gender concept on our behavior and decisions is now ingrained in my subconscious.
— Abigail Tarttelin
The gentlemanly Number 23 would have never made such a crude statement to a lady. But I was not a lady. Sure, I was intelligent and strong, but I dared to be wide open. I was Maggie Young, chaser of boys, writer of scandal, dropper of f-bombs, tits on a stick.
— Maggie Georgiana Young, Just Another Number
While men had the right to obey their biological urges, women had to suppress theirs until the perfect moment. From television, movies, books, magazines, my peers, and even some of my relatives, I was taught that if a woman allowed a man to penetrate her too soon, she was too easy of a conquest for him. He would move on to pursue greater challenges after he was finished using her body to relieve his sexual urges. If the woman waited too long to let the man enter her body, she was a prude and the man would eventually give up on her. Women needed to time this process perfectly so that she could “keep” a man in her life at all times.It was the man’s goal to catch the woman and the woman’s goal to keep the man.
— Maggie Georgiana Young, Just Another Number
We are strong and proud and beautiful and there are not enough stars in the night sky to measure our worth. I will honor my mother and take care of my family.Yes, I think. I am just a woman.
— Kristen Simmons, The Glass Arrow
At some point, while you were roaming the globe, making treaties and dividing the spoils of war, I quietly declared my own independence. I am the sovereign nation of Clio now. And there will be no terms of surrender.
— Tessa Dare, Say Yes to the Marquess
I adhere to the law of chastity because I don’t believe in pushing women. That’s what it means to be a man. I don’t hurt others simply to make myself feel superior. Gossip can ruin a woman as surely as unchaste behavior. True men don’t indulge in either. We don’t need to.
— Courtney Milan, Unclaimed
This was her body. She had learned to take pleasure in it, even if no man had ever done the same. It was curved and generous and womanly and strong, and it was formed to do more than decorate a drawing room, or transfer wealth from one gentleman to another.She was made to tempt, labor, inspire, create, sustain.Despite the way Rafe held her bound in his grasp, a sense of power moved through her. For once, she could revel in her femininity and feel it as something other than a disadvantage to be overcome. A quality to be respected, worshiped. Even feared.
— Tessa Dare, Say Yes to the Marquess
All feminists are suffragists, but not all suffragists are feminists," as one feminist explained.
— Jill Lepore, The Secret History of Wonder Woman
When someone falls,” Mark said, “you don’t throw her back down in the dirt. You offer her a hand up. It’s the Christian thing to do.
— Courtney Milan, Unclaimed
As for Jenny, she felt only that women - just like men - should at least be able to make conscious decisions about the course of their lives; if that made her a feminist, she said, then she guessed she was one.
— John Irving, The World According to Garp
Why does it have to come down to choosing just one man, when no one man can give me everything I want?
— Rebecca   Warner, Doubling Back to Love
Those who treat the muslim woman not as an individual but as a symbol either of Islamic chastity or secular liberalism are guilty of the same sin : the objectification of women
— Reza Aslan
...so individuals have their flesh cut and pulled, surgery companies proclaim it as an empowering choice, and the stifling cultural ideals about women's appearance are left unscathed
— Kat Banyard
One needn't identify as a feminist to participate in the redemptive movement of God for women in the world, The gospel is more than enough. Of course it is! But as long as I know how important maternal health is to Haiti's future, and as long as I know that women are being abused and raped, as long as I know girls are being denied life itself through selective abortion, abandonment, and abuse, as long as brave little girls in Afghanistan are attacked with acid for the crime of going to school, and until being a Christian is synonymous with doing something about these things, you can also call me a feminist.
— Sarah Bessey, Jesus Feminist: An Invitation to Revisit the Bible’s View of Women
Ruth was a novelist, and novelists, Oliver asserted, should have cats and books.
— Ruth Ozeki, A Tale for the Time Being
The creature was weeping, and who could blame it, as hideous and abject and lonely as it was? But its tears, Hannah perceived suddenly, didn't just spring from wretchedness. They were also tears of relief, because it was alive, because it had survived another day. How could anything be grateful for such an existence? And yet, this creature was, and when it saw itself and knew that it wanted to live in spite of everything, it wept even harder, sobbing inconsolably until it was depleted.
— Hillary Jordan, When She Woke
A feminist is someone who believes in social, political, and economic equality of the sexes.
— Sheryl Sandberg, Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead
This is why we all fight so hard. Not just for the vote, but for an equal opportunity in the world. A vote is a voice. I think you underestimate yourself, Queenie. This is your fight, same as it is mine.
— Sharon Biggs Waller, A Mad, Wicked Folly
For a woman to be taken as seriously as a man she must be three times as effective. Happily, this is not difficult.--Simone de Beauvoir
— Gale Martin, Grace Unexpected
A woman of battle cannot take the same risks as a woman of the fields or a woman of the town. One may not strap a baby basket to one’s back along with one’s swords and ride off to battle." -- Renda of Brannagh,
— Jordan MacLean, Sword of Hemlock
My father lost me to the Beast at cards
— Angela Carter, The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories
When people say to me, 'Why are you so good at writing at women?' I say, 'Why isn't everybody?' Obviously there are differences between men and women - that's what makes it all fun. But we're all people. There's a lot of good writers who are very humanist, but still manage to kind of skip fifty-five per cent of the race. And I just don't get that. Not to be able to write an entire gender? To me, the question isn't how do you do it? It's how can you possibly avoid doing it?
— Joss Whedon
As a Christian, my highest calling is not motherhood; my highest calling is to follow Christ.
— Rachel Held Evans, A Year of Biblical Womanhood
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
Suffering should not define you as a woman! And just because you’re a man it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t affect you! HELP HER to remove the taboos and the loneliness surrounding this disease; be understanding, show empathy, and don’t accuse her of being sensitive, delicate, or overly dramatic – this is a big opportunity for you guys to show that you care and to be a real
— Susan Sarandon
Could he actually be a decent guy?Hard to imagine.He was pretty to look at, though, she thought. Boys weren't objectified nearly enough, and turnabout is always fair play.
— Daniel Marks, Velveteen
I tend to like strong female characters. It just interests me dramatically. A strong male character isn't interesting because it has been done and it's so cliched. A weak male character is interesting: somebody else hasn't done it a hundred times. A strong female character is still interesting to me because it hasn't been done all that much, finding the balance of femininity and strength.[From a 1986 Fangoria interview]
— James Cameron
You have to question a cinematic culture which preaches artistic expression, and yet would support a decision that is clearly a product of a patriarchy-dominant society, which tries to control how women are depicted on screen. The MPAA is okay supporting scenes that portray women in scenarios of sexual torture and violence for entertainment purposes, but they are trying to force us to look away from a scene that shows a woman in a sexual scenario which is both complicit and complex. It’s misogynistic in nature to try and control a woman’s sexual presentation of self. I consider this an issue that is bigger than this film
— Ryan Gosling
I try to stay fit and eat healthily, but I am not anxious to starve myself and become unnaturally thin. I don’t find that look attractive on women and I don’t want to become part of that trend. It’s unhealthy and it puts too much pressure on women in general who are being fed this image of the ideal, which it is not. I think America has become obsessed with dieting rather than focusing on eating well, exercising and living a healthy life. I also think that being ultra-thin is not sexy at all. Women shouldn’t be forced to conform to unrealistic and unhealthy body images that the media promote. I don’t need to be skinny to be sexy.
— Scarlett Johansson
At a small dinner with other business executives, the guest of honor spoke the entire time without taking a breath. This meant that the only way to ask a question or make an observation was to interrupt. Three or four men jumped in, and the guest politely answered their questions before resuming his lecture. At one point, I tried to add something to the conversation and he barked, "Let me finish! You people are not good at listening!" Eventually, a few more men interjected and he allowed it. Then the only other female executive at the dinner decided to speak up--and he did it again! He chastised her for interrupting. After the meal, one of the male CEOs pulled me aside to say that he had noticed that only the women had been silenced. He told me he empathized, because as a Hispanic, he has been treated like this many times.
— Sheryl Sandberg, Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead
An avowed feminist activist and an outspoken bisexual, DiFranco has been candid about the necessity of women musicians identifying with the F-word. "Either you are a feminist or you are a sexist/misogynist," she once wrote. "There is no box marked 'other'".
— Marisa Meltzer, Girl Power: The Nineties Revolution in Music
Love is a word, another kind of open.As the diamond comesinto a knot of flameI am Blackbecause I come from the earth's insidetake my word for jewelin the open light.
— Audre Lorde, Coal
A lady decidedly. Fast? perhaps. Original? undoubtedly. Worth knowing? rather.
— George Egerton, Women Who Did: Stories by Men and Women, 1890-1914
I never thought it was fair that anatomy decided what my brain was fit for.
— C.J. Redwine, Defiance
It was only when I got to college that I realized that the rest of the world didn't run the way my world was run, and that there was a need for feminism. I'd thought it was all solved. There are people like my mom, clearly everyone is equal and it's all fine. Then I get into the world and I hear the things people are saying. Then I get to Hollywood and hear the very casual, almost insidious misogyny that just runs through so much of the fiction. It was just staggering to me.
— Joss Whedon
Women should have free access to every field of labor which they care to enter, and when their work is as valuable as that of a man it should be paid as highly.
— Theodore Roosevelt