Elif Batuman Quotes

I'm very practical. What I'm reaching for is individualism for women.

Girls throughout the world should be able to make decisions about their own lives. If they have the opportunity to attend school, they will become independent and strong.

Girls shouldn't throw away their lives. They have the opportunity to not have 25 children - to make something of themselves, and use their brains and creativity. I'm just thrilled about that.

My feminism, as intended by me, extends to empowering women to make legal choices, not to judge the legal choices they make. My fight is for rights.

There is a reason you keep hearing about the power of educating girls in the developing world. It's a reason so simple that you will probably view it with suspicion, as I once did. It's this: educating girls works. Really works.

Educating our young girls is the foundation for Nigeria's growth and development.

Until women learn to want economic independence, and until they work out a way to get this independence without denying themselves the joys of love and motherhood, it seems to me feminism has no roots.

I'm a child of the Women's Movement. I always believed that I could do anything. That women didn't have to be limited in any way.

In the long term, female education may be the best way to advance the status of women.

It scares the Church hierarchy to have educated women form thoughtful opinions and engage in dialogue.

I bleed feminism. I get equal pay to my male costars on a big show; I have my own home. I'm as independent as you could possibly be.

Education, leading to financial independence, has surely made women more empowered.

My parents always told me that we won't get you married until you are independent. Women have always been celebrated in my house.

I'm just sending a message to women that you can be anything you want to be.

A woman with an education may be able to spend more time sitting in a chair instead of lying on her back. A sound advantage, I should think.

By empowering a woman, we empower a child. By educating a girl child, we make it possible for her to grow up to become an empowered woman.

I consider myself to be a feminist. My hope and goal is that I'm going to raise two very strong independent women that won't need anybody, unless they chose that. I want them to be mistresses of their own destiny. But I don't judge people on the other end of that spectrum either.

The ability to secure an independent livelihood and honorable employ suited to her education and capacities is the only true foundation of the social elevation of woman, even in the very highest classes of society. While she continues to be educated only to be somebody's wife, and is left without any aim in life till that somebody either in love, or in pity, or in selfish regard at last grants her the opportunity, she can never be truly independent.

I'm inspired by strong, courageous women. My mother is the definition of a self-sufficient, independent woman whom I have always looked up to. I also greatly admire incredible women like Aung San Suu Kyi, and human rights attorney Nasrin Sotoudeh, who was wrongfully imprisoned for 4 years in Iran, simply for giving a voice to the voiceless and defending the helpless. And I'm in awe of the young Pakistani student and activist, Malala Yousafzai, for her bravery and resilience in the face of brutal repression.

You're able to make a real difference. If a woman's able to step away financially, she's able to begin to do all the other work.

Every woman who chooses - joyfully, thoughtfully, calmly, of their own free will and desire - not to have a child does womankind a massive favour in the long term.

As a modern woman, there are things I take for granted, and that shows up in the way I sit, the way I walk, the way I think, and what I know to be possible.

Women are responsible for creating their own roles.

And also I didn't want my future to be just sitting in a room and be imprisoned in my four walls and just cooking and giving birth to children. I didn't want to see my life in that way.

I believe and support the feminist movement, but I am not generally interested in considering women's rights in relation to equality with men, or in a competition with men, but rather within their own rights and feminine space.