Eve Ensler Quotes

Poetry is a political act because it involves telling the truth.

The exercise of democracy begins as exercise, as walking around, becoming familiar with the streets, comfortable with strangers, able to imagine your own body as powerful and expressive rather than a pawn.

I didn't consider myself a fashion designer at all at the time of punk. I was just using fashion as a way to express my resistance and to be rebellious. I came from the country, and by the time I got to London, I considered myself to be very stupid. It was my ambition to understand the world I live in.

You cannot police me, so get off my areola

I don't have to accept what you think I should look like and I do not accept what you think I should look like.

The rebel is committed to giving a form and pattern to the world. It is a pattern born of the indomitable thrust of the human mind, the mind which makes out of the mass of meaningless data in the world an order and a form.

Nothing is more beautiful than freedom of the body.

If we start creating our own maps, our own world, our own vision, then there's no way for the cultural tyrants to program us. And, that's why they're pushing so hard to get more outrageous.

As human beings we have this immediate gateway - you’ve just to articulate exactly the way that you’re exiled, exactly the way that you don’t belong, exactly the way that you can’t love, exactly the way that you can’t move ... and you’re on your way again. You’re on your way home. If you can just say exactly the way that you’re imprisoned - the door swings open.

I told my girls, 'Look at Rihanna: She's one of the biggest pop stars in the world. She's really famous, really powerful, really rich. Yet in every single video she can only wear panties. Poor Rhianna! We'll know when she is properly powerful and successful when we see her in a lovely cardigan.'

Graffiti is one of the few tools you have if you have almost nothing.

Redefine what it means to be sexy and what it means to be a woman. Showing my skin is not what makes me sexy. I like skirts and dresses just like everyone else, but I had a message I needed to put out there. It was up to me to show people and young girls there was another way.

Why do you do up your hair in those tortured plaits, now, Melanie? Why? Because, she said. You know that's no answer. You're spoiling your pretty looks, pet. Come here. She did not move. He ground out his cigarette on the window-ledge and laughed. Come here, he said again, softly. So she went.

The person I am in the company of my sisters has been entirely different from the person I am in the company of other people. Fearless, powerful, surprising, moved as I otherwise am only when I write.

A person who doesn't breathe deeply reduces the life of his body. If he doesn't move freely, he restricts the life of his body. If he doesn't feel fully, he narrows the life of his body. And if his self-expression is constricted, he limits the life of his body.

Loving, knowing, and respecting our bodies is a powerful and invincible act of rebellion in this society.

We all spend so much time not saying what we want, because we know we can't have it. And because it sounds ungracious, or ungrateful, or disloyal, or childish, or banal. Or because we're so desperate to pretend that things are OK, really, that confessing to ourselves they're not looks like a bad move. Go on, say what you want. ... Whatever it is, say it to yourself. The truth will set you free. Either that or it'll get you a punch in the nose. Surviving in whatever life you're living means lying, and lying corrodes the soul, so take a break from the lies for just one minute.

Art and revolt will die only with the last man.

I mean to prove I mean to move in my own way/ And say I've been getting along/ For long before you came into the play.

In Fleetwood Mac I have a persona, I call myself the 'Spider Woman'. I try to imagine myself putting on a spider mask. I become very subdued and quieter, I don't move so fast., I'm in a state of suspended animation.

You should tell her how nice her outfit is because her outfit is her choice whereas her face isn't.

Success is nothing more than living your life according to your own truth and your own terms.

Our struggle is not easy. Those who oppose our cause are rich and powerful and they have many allies in high places. We are poor. Our allies are few. But we have something the rich do not own. We have our bodies and spirits and the justice of our cause as our weapons.

It's best to incorporate a broadly eclectic point of view, and let whatever moves you be your inspiration.

Social media has created a historical shift from the historically powerful to the historically powerless. Now everyone has a voice.