Claire Messud Quotes

If you're going to make a film about rage in 2018, 2017... If you're going to make a film about revenge and anger, I feel like that has to be a film about women. I don't really want to watch a film about angry men. I've seen way too many of those.

I want to hear an alternative viewpoint, and I don't want girls to be defanged and declawed and pretty and mute.

Women should be obscene and not heard.

I respect women that have a voice and use it for a proper reason.

People call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute.

All theories of chivalry and generosity and vicarious representation fall, before the fact that woman has been grossly wronged by man. That being the case, the only modest and honest thing for man to do is to say, "Henceforward have a voice in making your own laws." Till this is done, she has no sure safeguard, since otherwise the same men who made the old barbarous laws may at any time restore them.

As a feminist of Egyptian and Muslim descent, my life's work has been informed by the belief that religion and culture must never be used to justify the subjugation of women.

Women's anger is very scary to people, and to no one more than to other women, who think, 'My goodness, if I let the lid off, where would we be?'

This is what the media does with women. You try to divide and conquer women so you can intimidate and victimise them. This is why they don't make movies where a lot of women get to be on set together. It's about dividing.

Telling women's stories is really important.

I feel, in our culture, the girl with any sort of power is called 'difficult' or various words that are demeaning just because she has a voice, has confidence, and stands for her rights. It is sad, but it is the truth of our country.

As women, we need to stand together. We are judged and objectified often enough by men.

I demanded more rights for women because I know what women had to put up with.

The sight of women talking together has always made men uneasy; nowadays it means rank subversion.

Usually when you see females in movies, they feel like they have these metallic structures around them, they are caged in by male energy.

Nature says women are human beings, men have made religions to deny it. Nature says women are human beings, men cry out no!

There are some people who still feel threatened by strong women. That's their problem. It's not mine.

Why am I not feminist? Maybe because I come from a country where my mother ruled my life. I never felt in any way that I couldn't achieve what I want.

'Power' is an explosive word, particularly when applied to women.

What I get a bit angry about is the image of women.

The message of women's liberation is that women can love each other and ourselves against our degrading education.

For a while, I was nervous about portraying women because of the objectification that automatically comes with it, whether the artist intends or not.

I think many people in my community had very different kinds of mothers: they had mothers who acquiesced in the system of male and white-supremacist domination, and my mother never did. She just could not do it. It just wasn't in her.

Men are not the enemy, but the fellow victims. The real enemy is women's denigration of themselves.

The Queen is most anxious to enlist everyone in checking this mad, wicked folly of 'Women's Rights'. It is a subject which makes the Queen so furious that she cannot contain herself.