Elizabeth Hardwick Quotes

Women spend their lives trying to look good for men. So a woman who feels she's sending the right visual signals is pleased with herself.

I think there will always be a double standard between males and females, so I think that an actress is more likely to protect her public persona, so to speak, than an actor would be.

None of my sisters are in the movies, nor are my nieces going to be. That's how Dutt 'sahab,' my dad, brought up the girls in the family, and I am just carrying his thought forward.

For centuries, the question of men needing to comprehend women simply didn't arise. Men were valued according to how they measured up to the manly virtues.

There is something revolting about the way girls' minds often jump to marriage long before they jump to love. And most of those minds are shut to what marriage really means.

My mom always taught me to be sweet and polite and cross my legs because it's what the guys like. Actually, they like a raunchy girl once in a while.

Working moms elevate themselves above stay-at-home moms, and stay-at-home moms try to put down working moms. It's a war in which both sides are trying to put the other one down.

The line between private and public lives is a fertile one for me. I've lived quite a public life, and it's the reason I have used well-known people in my work. I'm interested in what's going on beneath the facades they present to the world, taking them to a place which is uncomfortable.

It's possible that you have been told a time or 10 that you don't appreciate how tough your elders had it. It's true that, if you had been coming of age back in, say, 1960, you would probably be feeling more restricted, if only because you were doomed to spend your days in a skirt, nylon stockings and girdle.

In our world marriage was the best option for any woman. No girl ever chose to have a career unless she couldn't get a man. It was very much a tertiary life.

What really ticks me off is how the public figures you automatically become the roles you play. What most people never see is the silly side of me.

The purity of Jewish upbringing - the restrictions that one carries through life being a 'nice Jewish girl' - what a burden.

There are many photos of Eisenstein. I think he was quite vain, and he liked photos of him. Being a virgin at 33 is strange now, but let's not be too high-minded about that.

Women are enslaved by their own liberation.

I feel like we want women to be simpler, less complex, so we project a lot of versions of simplicity onto them to fit that.

Fairy tales are about money, marriage, and men. They are the maps and manuals that are passed down from mothers and grandmothers to help them survive.

Beautiful women must think about their beauty as capitalists think about their investments or politicians about their majorities; it is all they have to insure their places in the world.

The Olinka girls do not believe girls should be educated. When I asked a mother why she thought this, she said: A girl is nothing to herself; only to her husband can she become something. What can she become? I asked. Why, she said, the mother of his children. But I am not the mother of anybody's children, I said, and I am something.

Jennifer to Beth: Ech. I don't like Tom Cruise. Beth to Jennifer: Me neither. But I usually like Tom Cruise movies. Jennifer to Beth: Me too... Huh, maybe I do like Tom Cruise. But I hate feeling pressured to find him attractive. I don't. Beth to Jennifer: Nobody does. It's a lie perpetuated by the American media. Tom Cruise and Julia Roberts. Jennifer to Beth: Men don't like Julia Roberts? Beth to Jennifer: Nope. Her teeth scare them. Jennifer to Beth: Good to know.

There is a certain expectation of girls to eventually grow up and behave and fall in line. I've always bucked against that.

claims about what's 'natural' have long been used to reinforce traditional gender roles and values. ... Even the notion that women should have children at all is based on the idea that a woman's inherent and most important role is that of mother. Shockingly, men's 'innate' roles are a lot more fun than the ones bestowed on women.

The aim of education is to fit children for the position in life which they are hereafter to occupy. Boys are to be sent out intothe world to buffet with its temptations, to mingle with bad and good, to govern and direct.... girls are to dwell in quiet homes, amongst a few friends; to exercise a noiseless influence, to be submissive and retiring. There is no connection between the bustling mill-wheel life of a large school and that for which they are supposed to be preparing.... to educate girls in crowds is to educate them wrongly.

Liberals have managed to eliminate the idea of manly honor. Instead, all they have is womanly indignation.

We grow up being told, "Be a good girl." When you're told to be good, you have to get rid of whatever is bad.

The male has been persuaded to assume a certain onerous and disagreeable role with the promise of rewards -- material and psychological. Women may in the first place even have put it into his head. BE A MAN! may have been, metaphorically, what Eve uttered at the critical moment in the garden of Eden.