Quote

During the '80s I wrote Memoirs from the Women's Prison. This is one of my most important books. It came out in Arabic in '83. About my experience in prison.

Nawal El Saadawi

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Prison
Books
Came
Experience
Women
Arabic
Book
Memoirs
Important
Memoir
Wrote

More quotes by Nawal El Saadawi

Image
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
Image
She is free to do what she wants, and free not to do it.
Nawal El Saadawi
Image
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
Image
They said, “You are a savage and dangerous woman.” I am speaking the truth. And the truth is savage and dangerous.
Nawal El Saadawi
Image
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.
Nawal El Saadawi
Image
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.
Nawal El Saadawi
Image
Love has made me a different person. It has made the world beautiful.
Nawal El Saadawi
Image
To me, 'beauty' means to be natural, creative, honest - to say the truth.
Nawal El Saadawi
Image
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
Image
We see our homeland more clearly when we are away from it than when we are in it.
Nawal El Saadawi
Image
Language, journalism, food, sex. All is politics. Even innocent love stories are politics. ... There is no such thing as neutrality.
Nawal El Saadawi
Image
Truth is relative, and there is always something missing in truth that prevents it from being perfect.
Nawal El Saadawi
Image
Life is very hard. The only people who really live are those who are harder than life itself.
Nawal El Saadawi
Image
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
Image
The tracing of a child's lineage and its name with reference to the father, though it has lasted for many thousands of years, has not become any the more natural or reasonable as a result.
Nawal El Saadawi
Image
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.
Nawal El Saadawi
Image
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
Image
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.
Nawal El Saadawi
Image
We here in Egypt are fed up with U.S. colonialism.
Nawal El Saadawi
Image
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.
Nawal El Saadawi