Elif Safak Quotes

There are relatively few role models for young people. We are in a society that is ruled by men.

All societies on the verge of death are masculine. A society can survive with only one man; no society will survive a shortage of women.

I think when it comes to women who write or who fancy ourselves 'hip downtown literati', there is a certain contempt for being overly sexual or really looking for boyfriends. We tend to be marginalized as some 'Sex & The City' Carrie Bradshaw chick-lit dummies who just want shoes and a ring.

Pulp paperbacks have always provided a training ground for men, Some of them went on to become respected authors - Dean Koontz, Nelson DeMille and Martin Cruz Smith, for example. Why couldn't a woman?

If I were a girl, I'd despair. The supply of good women far exceeds that of the men who deserve them.

I've never felt like a woman fighting in a male world; I've never felt penalised.

I'm perfectly happy when I look out at an audience and it's all women. I always think it's kind of odd, but then, more women than men, I think, read and write poetry.

I grew up with that completely fictive idea of motherhood, where the mother never strayed from the kitchen. All the women in my books are very afraid that if they do anything with their minds they won't be complete women. I don't think my daughters' generation has that feeling.

I have this theory that the likeability question comes up so much more with female characters created by female authors than it does with male characters and male authors.

Women have to stand up to tremendous discriminatory practices, whether inherited traditions, whether imposed norms, male perceptions of power and control. The women always have to go through that and cannot take any privilege for granted.

I don't feel as if anything that has happened to me in my life was sidetracked because I was a woman.

In Hollywood, only a female who's massively damaged is interesting.

I'm very conditioned by my surroundings, by the influences of social media, by the television I watch. And I always found, growing up, that even inspiring female characters or complex female characters in television and film, I often found that their complexity was actually just another facet of their sexuality.

There is more to life than saas bahu issues with women being portrayed as petty characters and their own worst enemies.

Writing in India will not dramatically change till we learn to value books.

There's something about a woman's life choices that invites commentary, whether it's been invited or not.

Take 'Ex Machina.' Everyone said it was one of the great feminist works of science fiction. But what I found disappointing is that everything about the main female character is defined by men.

All of the Arabic women I grew up listening to or watching had a very strong character.

A lot of times, women are pigeonholed.

Historically, and even now, women have been asked to give up on their dreams way more than men, mostly - because it's sort of like you're supposed to once you become a wife and mother. That's a generalization; that's what the mentality has been.

You see, feminists don't really like to define the Patriarchy. They prefer to keep it nebulous and amorphous so they can conveniently blame it for everything that goes wrong in their lives. Not being paid enough? Patriarchy! Not getting a promotion? Patriarchy! Too many catcalls? Patriarchy! Too few catcalls? Patriarchy!

It's hard for women every single day; we have to be nice, but not too nice, ambitious, but not too ambitious. It puts a lot of pressure on what we should and can be.

If you really want to change a culture... empower women.

Growing up female in America. What a liability! You grew up with your ears full of cosmetic ads, love songs, advice columns, whoreoscopes, Hollywood gossip, and moral dilemmas on the level of TV soap operas. What litanies the advertisers of the good life chanted at you! What curious catechisms!

Why do men feel threatened by women?