Historically female authors were regularly forced to publish their novels under masculine pseudonyms in order to be taken seriously. One only has to think of the Brontë sisters to understand the challenges that women faced when attempting to be taken seriously in every aspect of life let alone becoming a published author.
Fortunately the modern world isn’t quite so blinkered and our libraries, our book shops, and our shelves at home are filled with innumerable pieces of brilliant literature penned by amazing women. We have collected together 10 inspirational, thought provoking, and simply perfect quotes by female authors across the years.
“The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself.”
“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.”
Buy The Diary of a Young Girl US
Buy The Diary of a Young Girl UK
“The biggest problem that women have is being ambivalent about their own power, … We should be comfortable with the idea of wielding power. We shouldn’t feel that it detracts from our femininity.”
Buy Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women US
Buy Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women UK
“After all those years as a woman hearing ‘not thin enough, not pretty enough, not smart enough, not this enough, not that enough,’ almost overnight I woke up one morning and thought, ‘I’m enough.'”
“I write for those women who do not speak, for those who do not have a voice because they were so terrified, because we are taught to respect fear more than ourselves. We’ve been taught that silence would save us, but it won’t.”
Buy Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches US
Buy Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches UK
“The greatest feminists have also been the greatest lovers. I’m thinking not only of Mary Wollstonecraft and her daughter Mary Shelley, but of Anais Nin, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and of course Sappho. You cannot divide creative juices from human juices. And as long as juicy women are equated with bad women, we will err on the side of being bad.”
“we are the women our parents warned us against, and we are proud”
Buy Herstory: Women Who Changed the World US
Buy Herstory: Women Who Changed the World UK
“So much is expected of you as you become a woman, and often you are asked to sacrifice parts of you in becoming a girl, I would say. Hermione doesn’t.”
“I will have my voice: Indian, Spanish, white. I will have my serpent’s tongue — my woman’s voice, my sexual voice, my poet’s voice. I will overcome the tradition of silence.”
Buy Rose: Love in Violent Times US
Buy Rose: Love in Violent Times UK
“I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.”
I think that is proof positive, as if it were needed, that women rock!
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