Anne Roiphe Quotes

When I grew up, it was a time when women were just supposed to be cute and not have many opinions. My mother and her friends were quite different. They were all the most beautiful women you've ever seen ... and they were very strong women.

Most of us don't have mothers who blazed a trail for us--at least, not all the way. Coming of age before or during the inception of the women's movement, whether as working parents or homemakers, whether married or divorced, our mothers faced conundrums--what should they be? how should they act?--that became our uncertainties.

Women have a mother-nature and a daughter-nature; there are no women with a wife-nature. The quality of wife is an acquired character; it is a combination of mother and daughter.

I don't believe that a female character needs to surrender her femininity in order to be an action hero.

I grew up with that completely fictive idea of motherhood, where the mother never strayed from the kitchen. All the women in my books are very afraid that if they do anything with their minds they won't be complete women. I don't think my daughters' generation has that feeling.

Because sorry to say, women run the house. They run the family. They hold things up. I mean, it's like you don't ever see your mom get sick because she handles everything. And it's kind of amazing I think to show people just how strong women are.

You really get your sense of women, to begin with, from your mom.

To me, a yummy mummy is a mum in her twenties, like Donna Air.

If being ‘selfless’ means a woman must give up her own inner identity and personal growth, that understanding of selflessness is wrong. … But today’s liberationist model goes too far the other way, stereotyping women as excessively independent of their families. A more sensible view is that husbands and wives are interdependent with each other. … The critics who moved mothers from dependence to independence skipped the fertile middle ground of interdependence. Those who moved mothers from selflessness to selfishness skipped the fertile middle ground of self-chosen service that contributes toward a woman’s personal growth. Because of these excesses, debates about the value of motherhood have, ironically, caused the general society to discount not only mothers but women in general.

Sometimes I feel like women of the world who are single moms and are working in Walmart are the strongest women out there, and that's what's really exciting to me is being all these different types of women.

I wanted to be like Jo March in 'Little Women.' I wanted to be married to a man who would give me lots of sons.

I have absolutely no problem being thought of as an action chick because, quite frankly, very few women have ever done that.

I want my girls to grow up learning that it is important their mum worked like a man.

I truly feel that being a woman, and particularly a mother, has had a large impact on my campaign.

Every mom I know, whether they're working in the home or working outside the home, they're super women to me.

We live in a culture that does not encourage women to be epic heroes of their own Big Stories but the mothers and lovers and wives and mistresses and muses and personal assistants, the femme fatales and fantasies and manic pixie dream girls, in someone else's Big Story, and this someone else is usually a dude.

I don't think women are that vastly different from men. I'm a bit of a woman myself. But I'm not a feminist filmmaker. I'm not making a feminist thesis to prove that women are important. I just happen to make films with strong characters that are women.

As women, our identity becomes subsumed by the fact that we are wives, daughters and mothers, and that becomes our all-encompassing identity. It happens with women because we are naturally driven towards being caretakers and being sacrificing.

I don't think 'Motherhood' is a map for women. I would never say that it's a template for every woman in response to her biology.

How can feminism be pro-women without being pro-motherhood? There is nothing more unique about being a woman.

We've never been in a time where mothers - parenthood, but particularly motherhood - is so fetishized.

I'm Nancy Pelosi, but my grandchildren call me Mimi. For me, politics is an extension of my role as a mother and a grandmother. For the Democratic women of the House, our work is not about the next election, but rather the next generation.

If I should have a daughter, instead of "Mom," she's going to call me "Point B."

How we dwelt in two worlds the daughters and the mothers in the kingdom of the sons.

Women are wives and mothers and girlfriends, but not the center of our own stories. No one's the good guy; no one's the bad guy. We all do deplorable things and very honorable things.