Quotes by 20th-century Women

I love seeing Lady Gaga's boobs and bum. I love seeing Katy Perry's boobs and bum. Love it. But that's not what my music is about. I don't make music for eyes, I make music for ears.

I like films that rest in the memory so I try and choose parts which have some kind of social or emotional force. For me, being an actress is not just a profession but a profession of faith.

Isabelle Adjani

In almost every thriller, a point is reached when someone, usually calling from a phone booth, telephones with a vital piece of information, which he cannot divulge by phone. By the time the hero arrives at the place where they had arranged to meet, the caller is dead, or too near death to tell. There is never an explanation for the reluctance of the caller to impart his message in the first place.

You cannot afford to confine your studies to the classroom. The universe and all of history is your classroom.

Business is globalizing so fast that it has led to the often quoted 'clash of civilizations'. People simply have not had time to get to know and understand people of other cultures sufficiently to live and work in harmony.

Even when I was little, I knew I was meant to perform. I would watch specials on TV or videos of Janet or Whitney, and I would start crying because I was like 'I want that so bad'.

Christina Aguilera

When governments are austere, societies are prosperous.

Esperanza Aguirre

Democracy cannot be built on revenge and you will not have the support of the world if you are intolerant and take the law into your own hands.

Madeleine Albright

The rich plankton of pop heroes and pop villains on which we Americans are accustomed to feed, the daily media soup of sports figures, ax murderers, politicians, and rock singers, the ever-running river of celebs, heavies, and oddballs that we use to spice up our own relatively humdrum lives has of late become a very watery gruel. Where have all the good guys and bad guys gone? Why does everyone out there look so gray?

Shana Alexander

Fair and balanced is doublespeak for bite-out-chunks-of-truth until only irrelevancy is left, byte-sized, entertaining irrelevancy.

Larisa Alexandrovna

I believe that the dysfunctional Muslim family constitutes a real threat to the very fabric of western life. It is in the family that children are groomed to practise, promote and pass on the norms of their parents' culture.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

I was so surprised at being born that I didn't speak for a year and a half.

When you have once gained sight, it is impossible to feign blindness.

Svetlana Alliluyeva

It is always difficult to escape from youth; its hopefulness, its optimistic belief in the privileges of desire, its despair, and its sense of outrage and injustice at disappointment, all these spring on a man inflicting indelicate agony when he is no longer prepared.

Margery Allingham

I'm still very blunt: If you want to be a writer, get a day job. The fact that I have actually been able to make a living at it is astonishing.

Dorothy Allison

Women see you for who you are. I have received countless emails from women across the country who are outraged and want to do something about you. You may have thought that women would be silenced by your attacks, but just the opposite is true. Women are rallying because we see that your attack on Ms. Fluke is an attack on all of us and on our right to speak out publicly and to stand up for contraception and our reproductive rights.

The requirements of romantic love are difficult to satisfy in the back seat of a Dodge Dart.

When played at the right sound level, which is quite high and exciting, the tones in this music will cause your ears to act as neurophonic instruments that emit sounds that will seem to be issuing directly from your head.

Maryanne Amacher

All individuals are imperfect and forgetful and find it difficult to transcend immediate self-interest. Historically therefore it has been deemed essential to create constitutional bodies that uphold and insist on adherence to certain ethical standards... If all these medical ethical bodies are to gain the respect of the public they should remain alert to intervene whenever these standards are threatened.

It's not as if the stories merge to a point where you think they are your life, but you do let them in the front door and the back door, and it's okay that sometimes certain characters stay for dinner.

No one becomes pure and selfless overnight; it involves time and concentrated effort, coupled with tremendous patience and love.

Mata Amritanandamayi

The relationship of feminism to my work and the evolution of the form of my music are in violent flux.

I like women a lot and I champion them. I tell people when they are beautiful, I tell other actresses when I think their work is amazing... So I think women feel relatively comfortable in my presence. Also, because I'm not perfect, you know? I've got flabby thighs, I'm aging and I'm 5ft 3in. I talk about my failing in contemporary society in terms of gyms or food or whatever. I think there's a polite appreciation that I'm honest.

Gillian Anderson

All of nature talks to me - if I could just figure out what it's saying - trees are swinging in the breeze. They're talking to me. Insects are rubbing their legs together. They're all talking. They're talking to me.

Laurie Anderson

I learned the hard way that just as I no longer have to save anyone, neither do I have to be saved.