Chris Abani Quotes

The boys of my people began very young to learn the ways of men, and no one taught us; we just learned by doing what we saw, and we were warriors at a time when boys now are like girls.

Across disparate cultures that require physical risk-taking as a rite of passage, it is always the men who engage in such pursuits.

My dad's a beautiful man, but like a lot of Mexican men, or men in general, a lot of men have a problem with the balance of masculinity and femininity - intuition and compassion and tenderness - and get overboard with the macho thing. It took him a while to become more, I would say, conscious, evolved.

Men should have rough hands and be strong.

Men were only made into 'men' with great difficulty even in primitive society: the male is not naturally 'a man' any more than the woman. He has to be propped up into that position with some ingenuity, and is always likely to collapse.

When I'm talking to groups that are all men, we talk about how the masculine role limits them. They often want to talk about how they missed having real fathers, real loving, present fathers, because of the way that they tried to fit the picture of masculinity.

I'm a woman who was raised to believe that you are not complete unless you have a man. Well, in some ways it's true. I am a feminist to a point. But I'm not going to deny the fact that I love to be with men.

Men are very emotionally dependent upon women from the day they are born to the day they expire.

Men aren't the way they are because they want to drive women crazy; they've been trained to be that way for thousands of years. And that training makes it very difficult for men to be intimate.

A guy should be a guy. You don't want him to be too... shiny.

Women may think men have it all, but only because we've been socialized to express the emotions that are tied to this reality differently, which is to say, men are not to express the emotions that are tied to it.

Once upon a time, growing up male gave little boys a sense of certainty about the natural order of things. We had short hair, wore pants, and played baseball. Girls had long hair, wore skirts, and, no matter how hard they tried, always threw a baseball just like a girl.

All young men want to prove themselves.

Black men struggle with masculinity so much. The idea that we must always be strong really presses us all down - it keeps us from growing.

I'm a country boy, and we're the product of our upbringing. As a boy, I was told that men don't cry.

I didn't have a father growing up, and I was raised with all women, and I didn't really understand men. I thought they were like women, right?

I'm one of nine sisters. My parents were dairy farmers in Wisconsin. My father didn't believe in girls doing farm work. Girls did housework, and he hired young men to do farm work. I would have preferred to be outside.

In Georgia, apparently, men are men and women are women - at least in their folk dance.

Manhood coerced into sensitivity is no manhood at all.

What I do know is that traditional gender roles are very real and flipping the norm is difficult for even the strongest, funniest, smartest men.

If I were a woman, I would love to have lots of kids. But for men, I don't believe in it.

Men are recognizing that they have been forced to conform to a very narrow and rather two-dimensional picture of maleness and manhood that they have never had the freedom to question.

I don't think most men do hate women at all - I think most men are trying their best and facing a culturation into masculine behaviour that forces them to deny their own humanity and to exaggerate distance from the world of women.

You would never say to a man, 'do you like playing strong men?' You just wouldn't say that.

In our culture, I think that there is no markers anymore. Young men don't really have something that says you're a grown up now, until you have a baby.