Nawal El Saadawi Quotes

The truth is a trap: you can not get it without it getting you; you cannot get the truth by capturing it, only by its capturing you.

Reason is like an officer when the King appears;
The officer then loses his power and hides himself.
Reason is the shadow cast by God; God is the sun.

This discipline and rough treatment are a furnace to extract the silver from the dross. This testing purifies the gold by boiling the scum away.

I can't love you in the dark,
It feels like we're oceans apart.
There is so much space between us,
Baby, we're already defeated.
Ah-yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah, everything changed me.

They were walking side by side, but each was alone.

Oumou Sangare embodies this alluring dichotomy like no one else. She’s the epitome of tough femininity; beautiful, elegant, determined, independent, talented…and, well, hard

By the way, what have you done that's so great? Do you create anything, or just criticize others work and belittle their motivations?

What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.

By simple common sense I don't believe in God, in none.

We must not contradict, but instruct him that contradicts us; for a madman is not cured by another running mad also.

Things That Lose by Being Painted
Pinks, cherry blossoms, yellow roses. Men or women who are praised in romances as being beautiful.Things That Gain by Being Painted
Pines. Autumn fields. Mountain villages and paths. Cranes and deer. A very cold winter scene; an unspeakably hot summer scene. (p. 138)

I'm not a princess,
This ain't a fairytale.
I'm not the one you'll sweep off her feet,
Lead her up the stairwell.
This ain't Hollywood,
This is a small town.
I was a dreamer before
You went and let me down.
Now it's too late for you and your white horse
To come around.

Jail is big business, believe me. I'm in jail, I see the big business. You can feed a whole town off one jail. This jail is in the middle of a town that feeds everybody. Everybody works here, this is the main income. So if there were no criminals, nobody would work.

Listen, if you guys wanna move around and shift your asses a little, it's okay. It's okay by us, right? You can take all your clothes off if you like too, doesn't matter... Fuck off! [laughs]

It is a kind of law of nature. The goal one aims for can rarely be reached by a direct road.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.