Quote

Something I tried to hold onto, to touch if only for a moment, but it slipped away from me like the air, like an illusion, or a dream that floats away and is lost. I wept in my sleep as though it was something I was losing now a loss I was experiencing for the first time, and not something I had lost a long time ago.

Nawal El Saadawi

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Nawal El Saadawi
Age: 89 †
Born: 1931
Born: October 27
Died: 2021
Died: March 21
Feminist
Gynaecologist
Novelist
Physician
Physician Writer
Politician
Psychiatrist
Writer
Nawal el-Saadaoui
Nawal al Sadaawi
Nawal Saadawi
Nawal as-Saadawi
Nawäl as-Saʿdāwi
Firsts
Hold
Experiencing
First
Sleep
Onto
Long
Though
Illusion
Something
Moment
Touch
Time
Lost
Tried
Like
Away
Air
Wept
Moments
Losing
Slipped
Dream
Loss
Floats

More quotes by Nawal El Saadawi

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Life is very hard. The only people who really live are those who are harder than life itself.
Nawal El Saadawi
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When you are intelligent and beautiful you face a lot of problems. If you are beautiful and stupid then it's easy.
Nawal El Saadawi
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First of all, I hated the medical profession. Medical education in Egypt was taken from the British, French, colonial educational system. And it's very, very lacking - there is no sexology. I never read the word clitoris in any medical book when I was educated.
Nawal El Saadawi
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Unity is power without unity women cannot fight for their rights anywhere.
Nawal El Saadawi
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I've lived here [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. The Salafists are trying to abort the revolution and make it religious, though the revolution started secular.
Nawal El Saadawi
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I knew I hated him as only a woman can hate a man, as only a slave can hate his master.
Nawal El Saadawi
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What makes revolutionary thought unique is its clarity and dignity, and its clear grasp of freedom and justice: simple, clear words that are understood without the need for any help from elite writers or thinkers.
Nawal El Saadawi
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We see our homeland more clearly when we are away from it than when we are in it.
Nawal El Saadawi
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You cannot have dignity or social justice or freedom without women.
Nawal El Saadawi
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Who said to kill does not require gentleness?
Nawal El Saadawi
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We here in Egypt are fed up with U.S. colonialism.
Nawal El Saadawi
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When I am in Egypt, I am phoned because I am listed in the medical directory under Mental Health and Psychiatry. And of course, I see very few people, because I give much more time to writing. So I cannot say that I really stopped medicine, but I practice medicine - or psychiatry - in a very different way. In an artistic way!
Nawal El Saadawi
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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.
Nawal El Saadawi
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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.
Nawal El Saadawi
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The Salafists are trying to abort the revolution and make it religious, though the revolution started secular. There was not a single Islamic slogan. 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.
Nawal El Saadawi
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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.
Nawal El Saadawi
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Woman at Point Zero I wrote during the '70s in Arabic. It came in English in '82. So, almost ten years' difference between the Arabic and the English.
Nawal El Saadawi
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Love has made me a different person. It has made the world beautiful.
Nawal El Saadawi
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Words should not seek to please, to hide the wounds in our bodies, or the shameful moments in our lives. They may hurt, give us pain, but they can also provoke us to question what we have accepted for thousands of years.
Nawal El Saadawi
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There is not a revolution that succe Saudi Arabia paid $7 billion for the Salafists to come, and the United States and Israel are pouring a lot of money into Egypt. Why? To divide the country by religion.
Nawal El Saadawi