Arnold Bennett Quotes

I was a big girl considering herself beautiful, which is in conservative Israel had never been seen.

We used to wear a track suit and T-shirt while training. But that did not go down well with the villagers, because women are usually supposed to wear salwar kameez.

But the center can be a harmful place for one who has lived so long on the edge.... Normality is the Great Neurosis of civilization.

We're supposed to be civilized. We're supposed to go to work every day. We're supposed to be nice to our friends and send Christmas cards to our parents.

Culturally we don't allow women to be as free as they would like, because that is frightening. We either shun those women or deem them crazy… But being that woman who pushes the boundaries means you also bring in less desirable aspects of yourself. At the end of the day, women are expected to hold up the world, not annihilate it.

It was fashionable, youre supposed to be a married lady, so I did.

Whenever we got a glimpse, their faces looked indecently revealed, as though we were used to seeing women in veils.

The ignorant are afraid to betray surprise or admiration...they think it ill manners.

In the Western standards of modesty, there are different guidelines.

It would be easier for me to reject all established values, if I knew what they were.

No woman dresses below herself from mere caprice.

I come from a long ago era where men could be men and stereotypical humor didn't offend anybody.

Now, it is well known, that a man may with more impunity be guilty of an actual breach either of real good breeding or of good morals, than appear ignorant of the most minute point of fashionable etiquette.

...how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity!

We say grace and we say ma'am. If you ain't in to that, we don't give a damn.

It's important to remember that feminism is no longer a group of organizations or leaders. It's the expectations that parents have for their daughters, and their sons, too. It's the way we talk about and treat one another. It's who makes the money and who makes the compromises and who makes dinner. It's a state of mind. It's the way we live now.

It is not OK in this culture to talk to friends about causes you believe in, much less to ask them to join in. It's OK to blast perfect strangers with crass messages every hour of the day, but it's a tinge embarrassing, it brings up some shyness, it seems an intrusion, it risks rejection to share real heartfelt commitments. It's easier to share our cynicism with strangers than our dreams with friends.

I thought grandmothers had to like you. It’s a law or something.

People give you a hard time about being a kid at twelve. They didn't want to give you Halloween candy anymore. They said things like, “If this were the Middle Ages, you'd be married and you'd own a farm with about a million chickens on it.” They were trying to kick you out of childhood. Once you were gone, there was no going back, so you had to hold on as long as you could.

I like playing the social convention. If you're in a period drama, there's always something dancing underneath the surface as a human - but then you always have to conform to the social conventions around you, and those two things get to be juxtaposed against each other. You're being human, but you're trapped within the social convention of the time.

This thing in society that you have to be a stick will always be in my mind, but that's just something I have to deal with.

She only maintains that it is possible, under some circumstances, for a lady to murder her husband; but that a woman who wears ankle-strap shoes and smokes on the street corner, though she may be a joy to all who know her and have devoted her life to charity, could never qualify as a lady.

I respect a man who can recognize a quotation. It's a dying art.

Some things I never learned to like. I didn't like to kiss babies, though I didn't mind kissing their mothers.

Whenever one honestly defies a tradition, one becomes, in reality, the more responsible to it.