Terry Eagleton Quotes

The whole system of society tells you what to do.

There's something unnatural about a woman finding babies or, more specifically, conversation about babies, boring. They'll think she's bitter, jealous, lonely. But she's also bored of everybody telling her how lucky she is, what with all that sleep and all that freedom and spare time, the ability to go on dates or head off to Paris at a moments notice. It sounds like they're consoling her, and she resents this and feels patronized by it.

The Normal is the good smile in a child's eyes- all right. It is also the dead stare in a million adults. It both sustains and kills- like a God. It is the Ordinary made beautiful; it is also the Average made leathal. The Normal is the indispensable, murderous God of Health.

You don’t owe prettiness to anyone. Not to your boyfriend/spouse/partner, not to your co-workers, especially not to random men on the street. You don’t owe it to your mother, you don’t owe it to your children, you don’t owe it to civilization in general. Prettiness is not a rent you pay for occupying a space marked ‘female’.

I don't want to play into the perception that all women should look like fourteen year old boys. I don't want to add to that pressure for young girls. But in Hollywood, there is a constant pressure to look a certain way.

I never was Carrie Bradshaw, but imagine how great it was to be told, "You are obligated to kiss all these men, to dress like that, and to carry on like that!" They were great guys, too.

I think the desire to be with someone beautiful...I just had such a different experience growing up. To be in a position where you're lauded for things that you don't own - and don't think of yourself as - it's so bizarre.

There's no such thing as turning back the hands of time, and it makes me crazy that we live in a society where that's sold to women—that we're supposed to believe that if we're getting older, we've failed somehow, that we have failed by not staying young. I wish that women would let other women age gracefully and allow them to get older and know that as we get older, we become wiser.

On the other hand, we worked a year on this and some people are going to watch it in a night and go, "We want more!" And there is something I miss about the longing and the anticipation for the next episode.

People that come to my shows are definitely people that feel outsiders. They feel like I don't feel sexy, I don't feel like - I can't go out every night on Friday and I can't connect to that, and I feel so much pressure to do that.

The time you wait subtracts the joy The heads the angel you destroy

In civilized life, where the happiness, and indeed almost the existence, of man depends so much upon the opinion of his fellow men, he is constantly acting a studied part.

People are really concerned about my relationship status. When I tell people I'm happy being single, they don't believe me. They say: 'You have to be miserable being alone'.

Our impulses toward instant gratification aren't to be trusted. Hoarding our resources isn't a worthy goal. We're created with eternity in our hearts, and our lives have everlasting value.

People want you to be a crazy, out-of-control teen brat. They want you miserable, just like them. They don't want heroes; what they want is to see you fall.

It's the most annoying question and they just can't help asking you. You'll be asked it at family gatherings, weddings, and on first dates. And you'll ask yourself far too often. It's the question that has no good answer. It's the question that when people stop asking it, you'll feel even worse. - WHY ARE YOU SINGLE?

Maybe you think you’ll be entitled to more happiness later by forgoing all of it now, but it doesn’t work that way. Happiness takes as much practice as unhappiness does. It’s by living that you live more. By waiting you wait more. Every waiting day makes your life a little less. Every lonely day makes you a little smaller. Every day you put off your life makes you less capable of living it.

We live in a beauty-obsessed culture, which on one hand is absolutely fabulous, but on the flip side, is also dangerously extreme.

The truth is that this culture of political correctness has tied the hands of law enforcement around the USA.

When I was growing up, I always felt there was an expectation that I would do one of two things: be great at something, or go crazy and become a total failure. There is no middle ground where I come from, and I am only now beginning to get a sense that there is a middle ground at all.

I don't much like to think that being a bachelor girl limits how you see the world. On the other hand, I know it certainly limits how the world sees you.

Bent out of shape from society's pliers, cares not to come up any higher, but rather get you down in the hole that he's in.

Women are not forgiven for aging. Robert Redford's lines of distinction are my old-age wrinkles.

This image of herself as a not ordinary women, an image which was trembling now in his eyes, might suddenly disappear. Nothing more difficult to live up to than men's dreams.

To be unwed and female was to succumb to an illness with only one known cure: marriage.