Anna Quindlen Quotes

Housework is the only activity at which men are allowed to be consistently inept because they are thought to be so competent at everything else.

If you're a man and you ask questions, you're a genius; if you're a woman, you're difficult.

A man is called a good fellow for doing things which, if done by a woman, would land her in a lunatic asylum.

They had always told me that I wrote like a man.

How can a woman be expected to be happy with a man who insists on treating her as if she were a perfectly normal human being.

I really feel like females have to go 50 extra miles. Not just one - 50 extra miles to be accepted or taken seriously.

Push the envelope too far as a female artist, and you may only earn an ocean of ink expressing concern for your delicate constitution, amounting to a caution against playing on traditionally male wavelengths.

The obvious and fair solution to the housework problem is to let men do the housework for, say, the next six thousand years, to even things up. The trouble is that men, over the years, have developed an inflated notion of the importance of everything they do, so that before long they would turn housework into just as much of a charade as business is now. They would hire secretaries and buy computers and fly off to housework conferences in Bermuda, but they'd never clean anything.

I've always said I have nothing against a woman doing anything a man can do as long as she gets home in time to cook dinner.

It's acceptable for men to act the fool. When women try, they're considered aggressive and opinionated.

If a guy married a woman and the guy was more famous, the world wouldn't deem it an inequal relationship. But if you have a guy marrying a woman who is more well-known, more, in quotes, "powerful," more wealthy, then there's a kind of reverse sexism that comes out, right?

I didn't want to be a boy, ever, but I was outraged that his height and intelligence were graces for him and gaucheries for me.

Why were the little girls all frightened To be just what they are The boys were told to ask themselves How high how far The girls were told to reach the shelves While the boys were reaching stars That's why little girls were frightened To be just what they are.

Whatever cleaning goes on on the planet, women do 99% of it. But see, women are not as proud of their 99% as men are of our one! We clean something up, we're gonna talk about it all year long. It might be on the news, you don't know. A woman could be out re-paving the driveway. Men actually have enough gall to run out on the porch and go "Hey baby? Man, it's hot as hell out here, ain't it! Look, don't worry about emptyin' that ashtray in the den, I done got it, all right? Did it for you, sweet pea. I'm gonna go take a nap now, all right?"

The girls were expected to grow up to be somebody's wife. They were also expected to read and write, those being considered soft indoor jobs that were too fiddly for the boys.

Women can do anything men can do. Except math, chess, running, jumping, lifting stuff, fixing things, making money, hockey, surfing, driving, making decisions, being tall, taking out the garbage, tipping, fishing, being funny (on purpose), reading a map, listening to good bands, writing, running the country, inventing anything important, or being fun to hang out with.

Our culture has created two almost irreconcilable descriptions of a 'good woman.' The first is the individual achiever; the second, the self-sacrificing domestic goddess.

I'd like us to deliver a little message to all the men still out there who think it's the '50s, and coming home simply means watching television with a beer.

People put stock in someone being in a 'girl group,' but we don't say that a band is a 'man group.'

When you live in a leading lady's body, which I do, you have to constantly prove that you are funny.

What works for a man, still does not work for a woman - both in terms of how they see themselves and how we see them.

We take men's obligation to earn money, and when they do it well, we blame them for having power and being oppressors. And when they don't do it all, women just don't marry men who are reading 'I'm Okay, You're Okay' in the unemployment line.

And then also I think it's harder for women because comedy is so opposite of being ladylike.

Some boys accepted me, some didn't. And my family had comments made to them. Brazil is still a very macho society, and sports are mainly for boys, so people would say to them: 'What is this girl doing? Why is she always out there in the soccer games with the boys?'

Now, as always, the most automated appliance in a household is the mother.