Deborah Tannen Quotes

For much of the female half of the world, food is the first signal of our inferiority. It lets us know that our own families may consider female bodies to be less deserving, less needy, less valuable.

There aren't good roles for women: the female parts aren't developed: the women are serving the men.

Men should think twice before making widow hood woman's only path to power.

I started to think of Grace of Monaco as a metaphor for women in general.

She is still less civilized than man, largely because she has not been educated.

All writers are battling and fighting as to how a woman should be characterised.

The notion that somehow women are wildly different infuriates me.

I by no means intend to simplify the challenges women face in any culture. Women are marginalized in all cultures in my opinion, some in more extreme ways than others.

As I get older I think, contrary to modern assumption but in line with the old Lerner and Lowe song, that it would actually benefit both them and society if - to quote Professor Higgins - a woman could be more like a man.

The whole world is starting to realize that it was the most unwise thing for our society to have ignored women power, to run the society with male priorities.

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?

A woman should be an illusion.

There's still prejudice and that resistance regarding women, not only on female football but in various activities. Men think that women are a bit fragile to perform some types of activities or don't have the ability and aren't strong enough.

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.

I don't know if I have any particular views about women in positions of power, though I do think it's more difficult for women, particularly in a Medieval setting. They have the additional problem that they're a woman and people don't want them in a position of power in an essentially patriarchal society.

A man is free to go up as high as he can reach up to; but I, with all my style and pep, can't get a man my equal because a girl is always judged by her mother.

Clever and attractive women do not want to vote; they are willing to let men govern as long as they govern men.

I don't think women in India are vulnerable.

There is this idea that you have to play heroines or women who succeed.

The test of civilization is its estimate of women.

Women do kids. Women do cooking. Women doing everything. And yet, their position in society is totally unacceptable.

Men weren't always happy for me. It was very challenging to watch a woman be so successful.

Just because I'm a woman does not mean I have to deal with everything to do with food.

Men are rarely questioned on their spouses or their partners, and nor should they be. And the question to ask is why is this done to women?