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Nawal El Tatawy Quotes

born 1942 Egypt

Egypt
Economists

Random Nawal El Tatawy quote

16 quotes

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

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.

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

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.

Everybody has to die. I prefer to die for a crime I have committed rather than to die for one of the crimes which you have committed.

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?

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.

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.

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.

Now i had learnt that honor required large sums of money to protect it, but that large sums of money could not be obtained without losing one's honor. An infernal circle whirling round and round, draggng me up and down with it.

I have triumphed over both life and death because I no longer desire to live, nor do I any longer fear to die. I want nothing. I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. Therefore I am free. For during life it is our wants, our hopes, our fears that enslave us.

Ever since I was a child I used to hear my father say: ‘If the price we pay for freedom is high, we pay a much higher price if we accept to be slaves

Men impose deception on women and punish them for being deceived, force them down to the lowest level and punish them for falling so low, bind them in marriage and then chastise them with menial service for life, or insults, or blows

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

A successful prostitute was better than a misled saint. All women are victims of deception. Men impose deception on women and punish them for being deceived, force them down to the lowest level and punish them for falling so low, bind them in marriage and then chastise them with menial service for life, or insults, or blows.

Motherhood goes back in history to a time when a father had no way of knowing his children. Fatherhood only became known when class patriarchal society had established itself and imposed monogamous marriage on women. Motherhood is like sun and rain and plants, a quality and product of nature which does not require laws or systems in order to exist.

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Nawal El Tatawy (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.