May Sarton Quotes

There is a sense that women are more anchored than men in our society.

People try to make women a very specific thing so that we like them.

To think that all in me of which my father would have felt proper pride had I been a man, is deeply mortifying to him because I am a woman.

They [men and women] have both been, and men especially, have been told that how they naturally are is bad.

A man is free to go up as high as he can reach up to; but I, with all my style and pep, can't get a man my equal because a girl is always judged by her mother.

Many differences are rooted in biology and reinforced through culture, so it's important to acknowledge that. Because if you say men and women are the same and if male behaviour is the norm, and women are always expected to act like men, we will never be as good at being men as men are.

As societies continue to loosen their standards regarding what is appropriate female and male behavior, I think we are going to realize we have not only underestimated women, but also men.

No one knows what women want!

No one yet knows what a man's province is, and how far that province, as conceived of today, is artificial.

I can't write - I can't think like a woman... it's not natural, but I've tried.

We're really taught to be followers from a very young age - men lead and women follow.

The majority of the film industry is, like, obsessed with a ridiculous gender binary and keeping with this stupid social binary. Like, who cares?

It's hard for women every single day; we have to be nice, but not too nice, ambitious, but not too ambitious. It puts a lot of pressure on what we should and can be.

Women all live a double standard.

If you're a girl and you don't fit the very specific vision of what a girl should be, which is always from a man's perspective, then you're a little bit at a loss.

I just don't think America wants a female host. It's like men don't walk around in skirts in this country. Why change a good thing?

Envy of the male role can come as much from an undervaluation of the role of wife and mother as from an overvaluation of the public aspects of achievement that have been reserved for men.

We do what we see and what we're told. If we haven't been raised in a family or in a community where women are treated as full human beings and men don't have to be superior anymore, we continue to think that it's not only natural but inevitable.

Some days you just want to get dressed and go about your business. But if you're a woman, you can't, because there is no unmarked woman.

You can't be a person and a lady. If you're a person, you can open the damned door yourself.

Women do feel like they're in a box. Society, Hollywood, some men-they want to wrap women up in a neat little package.

Any woman who wishes to smash into the world of men isn't very feminine.

Often, women as little girls are sent off on a track for them to live a perfect life and be a perfect woman. Not for boys, who can be themselves with their mood and their temper.

A woman can never be too rich or too thin, but until very, very recently, she could be too powerful, for which - if she wasn't smart enough to camouflage herself - she generally paid the price.

I'm definitely more attracted to chaos than to order. The point is, I find the female roles out there very cliche. If we are limited to being only lovers or mothers, we are limiting ourselves.