Ali Smith Quotes

Women's art, political art - those categorisations perpetuate a certain kind of marginality which I'm resistant to. But I absolutely define myself as a feminist.

Women throughout history have had to defy rigid conventions about what is and is not expected of them.

Massachusetts women as a rule adhere too strongly to old-time conventions.

The more potent, unasked question is how society at large reacts to eager, voluntary violence by females, and to the growing evidence that women can be just as aggressive as men.

I grew up in a world that told girls they couldn't play rock 'n' roll.

I was surrounded by strong women so it had never even occurred to me that women were anything other than equal to men.

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.

We're comfortable with women in certain roles but not comfortable with women expressing anger or fully accepting their power. The most daring question a woman can ask is, 'What do I want?'

I'd refer to myself as a feminist. I don't think my music is overtly rooted in feminism. I'm a teenager, and 95 percent of my friends are boys, and that's just the way I've always been.

And then also I think it's harder for women because comedy is so opposite of being ladylike.

I think women in pop have been declawed and defanged, and they're just meant to look pretty and sing pretty.

I was a little doubtful about the propriety of going to the Mammoth Cave without a gentleman escort, but if two ladies travel alone they must have the courage of men.

Boys always like to see girls kiss. I don't get it; girls don't want to see boys kiss.

Perhaps it is time to debate culture. The common story is that in 'real' African culture, before it was tainted by the West, gender roles were rigid and women were contentedly oppressed.

And when a woman's will is as strong as the man's who wants to govern her, half her strength must be concealment.

I decided that if I want to write about a female hero in the 1920s, I'm going to have to give her all the advantages I can because she has serious disadvantages in being a woman. I wasn't going to have her cowed or overawed by class, so she had to be titled.

Honestly, because of the way women were treated, I wouldn't want to go back to Puritan times. I'm far too outspoken to be a woman in Puritan times.

It was part of being a girl in the '60s that you were creative.

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

People ask me if I think Anne Boleyn was a feminist... but she wasn't striking out on behalf of women, and she wasn't particularly keen on them.

In America, Jefferson noted with approval, women knew their place.

It's important for any artist - particularly female artists - to feel completely comfortable and to know what they're trying to do.

Unfortunately we - and I'm speaking not for Latin America but for Mexico because that's where I come from - we still, I think, are a little bit macho. Not that we only live in a macho world, but we also think as a macho world; even the women, you know? The women in Mexico, because that's the way we were raised.

Women artists need to break barriers in order for women's experience to be valuable.

One of the things that interests me about the Regency period is how women began to stir under the thumbs of men, wanting more and bigger freedoms.