Martin Compston Quotes

Arthur Miller wouldn't have married me if I had been nothing but a dumb blonde.

In the schools of small Midwestern towns, the only aristocracies are of beauty, intelligence, and athletic prowess.

We were five heterosexual, good-looking men. We competed against each other for the sexiest girls... I won.

See, at a certain point it becomes cool to be boy crazy. That happens in sixth grade, and it gives you so much social status, particularly in an all-girls school, if you can go up and talk to boys.

Men are forever eager to press drink upon those they consider their superiors, hoping thereby to eliminate that distinction between them.... And women, when confronted by superiors, substitute for drink the crippling liquor of their sex.

French women will always look up at a man, even if he is four inches shorter than she is.

I do believe that men can be emasculated by successful women. I don't think I'm emasculating. But I have seen the dynamic with men who either don't make money or make less money. It's just not good for them.

It is better for a woman to compete impersonally in society, as men do, than to compete for dominance in her own home with her husband, compete with her neighbors for empty status, and so smother her son that he cannot compete at all.

Nature makes woman to be won and men to win.

Like when I had long hair, you kind of got male attention from everything. But when you had short hair, it was a different kind of man that was attracted to you or I found coming up.

Every dude in your high school wasn't striving to be the best poet because then he'd get all the girls, right? But you could imagine a society in which that were the case.

I was not a jock in high school. I know, you're shocked.

I think if I was 5-foot-3, I would have been really popular and dated a lot more in high school. I didn't develop like the pretty girl.

I never call them 'guys;' I always call them 'boys.' Maybe it's a superiority complex - my needing to keep them down.

If you decide to go clubbing on a Friday night, and you're home before two A.M., you're not a man's man.

In Oklahoma, the girls like the big football players. Girls were more interested in those guys, and I was, like, kind of a drama kid.

I thought, 'If I can't be prom queen, I can dance 'Les Sylphide.'

Men are always like, 'You're so intimidating.' I don't find myself to be. But whatever - I'm not going to try to be less intimidating. It's just a matter of finding a guy who's able to deal with it.

Whenever you have to do a photo shoot with a woman, there is this weird competition. They need to prove something. They need to play games - maybe unconsciously - but women are so sensitive, and people call me more masculine sometimes.

In a world of status, independence is key, because a primary means of establishing status is to tell others what to do, and taking orders is a marker of low status. Though all humans need both intimacy and independence, women tend to focus on the first and men on the second. It is as if their lifeblood ran in different directions.

I was not a queen bee, ever.

I was never a boy magnet at school. There was always the girl all the guys liked and wanted to date, but it was never me.

I'm afraid to say I was Mr. Popular at school. I went out with all the girls in my year - I quite liked girls back then - and even dated ones in the year above.

I think we're a kind of desperation. We're sort of a maddening luxury. The basic and essential human is the woman, and all that we're doing is trying to brighten up the place. That's why all the birds who belong to our sex have prettier feathers - because males have got to try and justify their existence.