Romola Garai Quotes

I'm not telling women to be like men. I'm telling us to evaluate what men and women do in the workforce and at home without the gender bias.

I grew up in a home where I was literally told from a young age, 'No daughter of mine will ever wash a man's socks,' and I am pleased to say I never have. It was made clear that whatever I wanted to do I should aspire to, regardless of my gender.

We still live in a world in which a significant fraction of people, including women, believe that a woman belongs and wants to belong exclusively in the home; that a woman should not aspire to achieve more than her male counterparts and, particularly, not more than her husband.

I grew up around a lot of feminine energy.

It's hard for women who make a lot of money and make decisions all day long, then they have to come home and be 'Stupid Sally.' Men need respect, and they need to know that they can lead in the relationship, so even if they don't make the most money they need to be able to call the shots.

When lions paint pictures men will not always be represented as conquerors. When women translate laws, constitutions, bibles and philosophies, man will not always be the declared heard of the church, the state, and the home.

A woman can do anything. She can be traditionally feminine and that's all right; she can work, she can stay at home; she can be aggressive; she can be passive; she can be any way she wants with a man. But whenever there are the kinds of choices there are today, unless you have some solid base, life can be frightening.

Men must teach each other that real men do not violate or oppress women - and that a woman's place is not just in the home or the field, but in schools and offices and boardrooms.

People in this day and age are still under the illusion that every woman who is successful must be being controlled by a man... I'm the boss.

Everything I do is going to contain the message that men who are going to be comfortable with powerful women are going to be more powerful men

I listen to feminists and all these radical gals - most of them are failures. They've blown it. Some of them have been married, but they married some Casper Milquetoast who asked permission to go to the bathroom. These women just need a man in the house. That's all they need. Most of the feminists need a man to tell them what time of day it is and to lead them home. And they blew it and they're mad at all men. Feminists hate men. They're sexist. They hate men - that's their problem.

Has feminism increased the pool of happy women?

I realized that calling yourself a feminist or not calling yourself a feminist, just by being in a band of all girls, it's all you talk about.

Women have two choices: Either she's a feminist or a masochist.

Women have plenty of roles in which they can serve with distinction: some of us even run countries. But generally we are better at wielding the handbag than the bayonet.

In the beginning, I wanted to enter what was essentially a man's field. I wanted to prove I could do it. Then I found that when I did as well as the men in the field I got more credit for my work because I am a woman, which seems unfair.

It is not the mediocrity of women's education which makes their weakness; it is their weakness which necessarily causes their mediocrity.

The original necessity for the ceaseless presence of the woman to maintain that altar fire - and it was an altar fire in very truth at one period - has passed with the means of prompt ignition; the matchbox has freed the housewife from that incessant service, but the feeling that women should stay at home is with us yet.

Women are only half responsible for children. Men raise children as much as women do. Until men are as nurturing as women are, and until women are as active outside the home as men are, we won't have democratic families, and therefore we won't have democracy, and we will continue this hierarchical notion of life.

I wrote my first play, Uncommon Women and Others, in the hopes of seeing an all-female curtain call in the basement of the Yale School of Drama. A man in the audience stood up during a post show discussion and announced, “I can't get into this, it's all about girls.” I thought to myself, “Well, I've been getting in to Hamlet and Laurence of Arabia my whole life, so you better start trying.”

When people were very concerned about the violence against women, I encouraged people to stick with it because it was going somewhere and there was a reason why. It's all a commentary on gender roles and women and having to be the damsel or to stay on the ranch or to stay at home.

Not to be too doctrinaire, but we live in the patriarchy! And therefore anything explicitly associated with the female gender, including motherhood, needs to be defensively claimed, because it's either devalued or sentimentally idealized, but not supported. I so thoroughly believe that female human beings have worth that I don't feel the need to argue it, but I think that there's a part of me that very specifically wants to make space for those ideas to be centralized, if only for the moment.

People will say to me, ‘You’ve played so many strong women,’ and I’ll say, ‘Have you ever said to a man, “You’ve played so many strong men?”’ No! Because the expectation is [men] are varied. Why can’t we have that expectation about women?

It's really funny if two women stand on the House floor. There are usually at least two men who go by and say, 'What is this, a coup?' They're almost afraid to see us in public together.

Boys are sent out into the world to buffet with its temptations, to mingle with bad and good, to govern and direct - girls are to dwell in quiet homes among few friends, to exercise a noiseless influence.