Quotes by Nawal El Saadawi

“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.”

“Whenever I go to New York or any European country, they say: 'Nawal, why don't you get a facelift?' I tell them, 'I am proud of my wrinkles. Every wrinkle on my face tells the story of my life. Why...”

“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've participated in many demonstrations since I was a child. When I was at medical college, I was fighting King Farouk, then British colonization, against Nasser, against Sadat who pushed me into ...”

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

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

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

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

“Women in most countries have not achieved much, because they can't be liberated under the patriarchal, capitalist, imperialist and military system that determines the way we live now, and which is ...”

“How can I, Nawal El Saadawi, have an identity if my history is effaced? If my female ancestors are forgotten, buried in oblivion? If Ma'at, Isis, and Sekhmet are not spoken of? If Khadija the wife ...”

“In the Western media and in Western popular thinking, the term fundamentalist is almost restricted to Islamic groups, and yet the New World Order is characterized by the upsurge of so-called fundam...”

“When I travel in the Arab countries, I notice that the TV screen often shows two contradictory images one after the other. A religious man talking about the need to veil women appears on the TV scr...”

“All fundamentalists - whether Christian, Jewish, Muslim or otherwise - are partners in the attempt to breed division, strife, racism and sexism; they help international imperialism to maintain its ...”

“The woman sitting on the ground in front of me was a real woman, and the voice filling my ears with its sound, echoing in a cell where the window and door were tightly shut, could only be her voice...”

“All my life I have been searching for something that would fill me with pride, make me feel superior to everyone else, including kings, princes and rulers.”

“Every single man I did get to know filled me with but one desire: to lift my hand and bring it smashing down on his face.”

“Do you prefer oranges or tangerines?”

“My work is not worthy of respect. Why then do you join in it with me?”

“Her voice continued to echo in my ears, vibrating in my head, in the cell, in the prison, in the streets, in the whole world, shaking everything, spreading fear wherever it went, the fear of the tr...”

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