Daniel Handler Quotes

Every woman is supposed to have the same set of motives, or else to be a monster.

Whatever is dirty, it is women's job to clean up, or drive some man to clean up, and that goes for everything from cellar to senate.

As a kid, you get to the stage where you realise the gender barriers that exist in society and what you're supposed to do and not supposed to do.

What works for a man, still does not work for a woman - both in terms of how they see themselves and how we see them.

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.

A lot of times, I get asked, 'Do you feel you have a responsibility to young girls to be a role model?' I don't see that happening as much to guys. I feel like, just because I'm a girl, I'm supposed to take more responsibility? Is that how it works?

I think there are a lot of rules for women. We have a lot of expectations and a lot of rules for women. So we're expected to march in a straight line, and when we don't, all hell breaks loose.

In the end, I do think it's insulting to men and women to insist that they fit a certain profile. I never understood that.

I'm from the generation that had the boys' door and the girls' door when you went to school, and you got in big trouble if you went in the wrong one.

A man is educated and turned out to work. But a woman is educated and turned out to grass.

People don't want to see women doing things they don't think women should do.

I have been told by people that I should not be seen clubbing with good-looking women, but I can't see why not. Why be a pop star otherwise?

A man is as good as he has to be, and a woman as bad as she dares.

Men never get free from morality, only women.

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

Shrillness is not the inevitable curse of the fairer sex.

Women have to compensate more in the personality department in order to get the things that men get. And they don't have as much leeway for being divas or jerks.

Women are allowed to exist in this very narrow lane, but as soon as you step out of that lane, people want to stone you.

One way I try to manage it is by not having a princess party for my daughter and trying to do things that are not so stereotyped. But if she's invited to a princess party, of course I'm not going to stop her going.

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.

It can be exhausting eating a meal cooked by a man. With a woman, it's, Ho hum, pass the beans. A guy, you have to act like he just built the Taj Mahal.

I thought I would write something that would make some people uncomfortable. . . . What intrigued me, I think, was the idea of women of my own generation who were successful, intelligent, coming to power and suddenly in the public arena. I started to think about what they are allowed and what they are not allowed.

Even the most powerful women I know go out of their way to say that they're not really interested in power. Imagine a man saying that.

Women all live a double standard.

Gentlemen ... Do you not see that so long as society says a woman is incompetent to be a lawyer, minister or doctor, but has ample ability to be a teacher, that every man of you who chooses this profession tacitly acknowledges that he has no more brains than a woman?