Nawal El Saadawi Quotes

To be creative means to connect. It's to abolish the gap between the body, the mind and the soul, between science and art, between fiction and nonfiction.

Women are half the society. You cannot have a revolution without women. You cannot have democracy without women. You cannot have equality without women. You can't have anything without women.

Danger has been a part of my life ever since I picked up a pen and wrote. Nothing is more perilous than truth in a world that lies.

She is free to do what she wants, and free not to do it.

When we live in a world that is very unjust, you have to be a dissident.

Solidarity between women can be a powerful force of change, and can influence future development in ways favourable not only to women but also to men.

All the men I did get to know, every single man of them, has filled me with but one desire: to lift my hand and bring it smashing down on his face.

If you are creative, you must be dissident.

To have arrived at the truth means that one no longer fears death. For death and truth are similar in that they both require a great courage if one wishes to face them.

To me, 'beauty' means to be natural, creative, honest - to say the truth.

Everybody has to die, Firdaus. I will die, and you will die. The important thing is how to live until you die.

There is a proverb that says, ‘Talk so that I may know who you are.’ But I say, ‘Show me your eyes and I will know who you are.

When you are intelligent and beautiful you face a lot of problems. If you are beautiful and stupid then it's easy.

You poor, deluded woman...do you believe there is any such thing as love?...You're living an illusion. Do you believe the words of love they whisper in the ears of penniless women like us?

They said, “You are a savage and dangerous woman.” I am speaking the truth. And the truth is savage and dangerous.

When my second husband shouted, 'Me or your writing!' I replied, 'My writing.' We separated.

Nothing is more perilous than truth in a world that lies.

moral codes and standards in our societies very rarely apply to all people equally. This is the most damning proof of how immoral such codes and standards really are.

Plastic surgery is a postmodern veil.

Who said to kill does not require gentleness?

The family code in Egypt is one of the worst family codes in the Arab world. Polygamy. The husband is having absolute power over the family.

The feminists who are aware of the effects of patriarchy realize that we are all in the same boat from the dangers of patriarchy, and that the oppression of women is universal.

We never know the reality of things: we see only what we are aware of. It is our consciousness that determines the shape of the world around us -- its size, motion and meaning.

I am very much against makeup and high heels and all that we inherit as 'beauty.'

Love has made me a different person. It has made the world beautiful.

If you do not love yourself, well, you cannot do anything well, that's my philosophy.

Man ... put himself in a tight corner when he decided that woman was innately passive.

Many people come here and they think my apartment is a poor relative to my name. But you cannot be radical and have money, it’s impossible.

I now knew that all of us were prostitutes who sold themselves at varying prices, and that an expensive prostitute was better than a cheap one.

Fearing servility, people become servile.

We see our homeland more clearly when we are away from it than when we are in it.

I am becoming more radical with age. I have noticed that writers, when they are old, become milder. But for me it is the opposite. Age makes me more angry.

I have triumphed over both life and death because I no longer desire to live, nor do I any longer fear to die.

Home to me is the world because my books have been translated into more than 30 languages.

We here in Egypt are fed up with U.S. colonialism.

The slogan of the revolution was dignity, social justice, and freedom. You cannot have dignity or social justice or freedom without women.

But I feel that you, in particular, are a person who cannot live without love." "Yet I am living without love." "Then you are either living a lie or not living at all.

My skin is soft, but my heart is cruel, and my bite is deadly.

Memory is never complete. There are always parts of it that time has amputated. Writing is a way of retrieving them, of bringing the missing parts back to it, of making it more holistic.

We cannot be liberated as women in a society built on class oppression or gender oppression or religious oppression.

Life is very hard. The only people who really live are those who are harder than life itself.

You know, I look to myself mainly as a creative writer all my life and a medical doctor.

Doubt is the first step towards knowledge, not faith.

War criminals in the U.S. and Israel are not punished: no international court has the courage to put them on trial.

Home is where you are appreciated, safe and protected, creative, and where you are loved - not where you are put in prison.

People like [Memoirs of a Woman Doctor], whether young people, young women, even critics - male critics - they were not shocked by it. Of course, some parts were cut.

I've lived in Egypt among Christians and Muslims, and we never had a conflict. Now you have a conflict between Christians and Muslims and Baha'is and Sunni and Shia.

There is not a revolution that succe Women are suffering because they are being excluded. The high military council excluded women from the committee to change the constitution.

There was not a single Islamic slogan [in Egypt]. It was secular men and women, and in fact, they were unified. Now they want to divide the revolution, and religion is a very strong weapon.

I practiced medicine up 'til now. I practice psychiatry. I shifted from different specialties. I started as a village doctor - community doctor, public health preventive medicine.