Nawal El Saadawi
The parts in which I elaborated on the sexual life of the doctor herself, the personal life, her relation with men [in Memoirs of a Woman Doctor]. All this. They left only some very, very minute parts. And also the political, the political element in it. So in a way, they cut pieces that to my mind were very important.Collection: Cutting
I knew I hated him as only a woman can hate a man, as only a slave can hate his master.Collection: Hate
Many people come here and they think my apartment is a poor relative to my name. But you cannot be radical and have money, it’s impossible.Collection: Thinking
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.Collection: Educational
But I feel that you, in particular, are a person who cannot live without love." "Yet I am living without love." "Then you are either living a lie or not living at all.Collection: Lying
Women are suffering because they are being excluded. The high military council excluded women from the committee to change the constitution [of Egypt]. We cannot be liberated as women in a society built on class oppression or gender oppression or religious oppression.Collection: Religious
I was inspired by my life. I was inspired by the lives of many women doctors around me. So [Memoirs of a Woman Doctor ] is a mixture.Collection: Doctors
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.Collection: Christian
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.Collection: Book
Women were everywhere in the revolution. Women participated in it, and many women were killed. Then we had the right to speak up and gain some more rights, but what happened was there was a backlash. Why? Because we have the Salafists, Muslim Brothers, religious groups.Collection: Religious
The slogan of the revolution was dignity, social justice, and freedom. You cannot have dignity or social justice or freedom without women.Collection: Justice
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!Collection: Writing
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.Collection: Children
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.Collection: Cutting
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.Collection: Children
Man ... put himself in a tight corner when he decided that woman was innately passive.Collection: Men
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.Collection: Hurt
There is a proverb that says, ‘Talk so that I may know who you are.’ But I say, ‘Show me your eyes and I will know who you are.Collection: Eye
Everybody has to die, Firdaus. I will die, and you will die. The important thing is how to live until you die.Collection: Important
Life is very hard. The only people who really live are those who are harder than life itself.Collection: People
Language, journalism, food, sex. All is politics. Even innocent love stories are politics. ... There is no such thing as neutrality.Collection: Sex
Democracy is not just freedom to criticize the government or head of state, or to hold parliamentary elections. True democracy obtains only when the people - women, men, young people, children - have the ability to change the system of industrial capitalism that has oppressed them since the earliest days of slavery: a system based on class division, patriarchy, and military might, a hierarchical system that subjugates people merely because they are born poor, or female, or dark-skinned.Collection: Children
You cannot have dignity or social justice or freedom without women.Collection: Justice
Here the oppression of women is very subtle. If we take female circumcision, the excision of the clitoris, it is done physically in Egypt. But here it is done psychologically and by education. So even if women have the clitoris, the clitoris was banned; it was removed by Freudian theory and by the mainstream culture.Collection: Egypt
Love has made me a different person. It has made the world beautiful.Collection: Love
When my second husband shouted, 'Me or your writing!' I replied, 'My writing.' We separated.Collection: Husband
Revolutionary men with principles were not really different from the rest. They used their cleverness to get, in return for principles, what other men buy with their money.Collection: Men
Home to me is the world because my books have been translated into more than 30 languages. People feel they know me and the minute they talk about my life or books I feel at home. Home is where you are appreciated, safe and protected, creative, and where you are loved – not where you are put in prison.Collection: Book
I never stopped writing. I started writing when I was twelve years of age. And I was writing all the time. But nothing was translated until thirty years after I started writing, when The Hidden Face of Eve was translated in 1980.Collection: Writing
There is not a revolution that succeeded in a few months. It takes years, even decades, to fulfill its goals. I am very hopeful because I trust the revolution and feel nobody can really conquer a nation that has decided to be united and to fight, and we decided to fight. The revolution is there, inside the Egyptians by the millions.Collection: Fighting
We see our homeland more clearly when we are away from it than when we are in it.Collection: Homeland
Fearing servility, people become servile.Collection: People
Interviewer: What would you say to a woman in this country who assumes she is no longer oppressed, who believes women's liberation has been achieved? el Saadawi: Well I would think she is blind. Like many people who are blind to gender problems, to class problems, to international problems. She's blind to what's happening to her.Collection: Country
You poor, deluded woman...do you believe there is any such thing as love?...You're living an illusion. Do you believe the words of love they whisper in the ears of penniless women like us?Collection: Believe
There is not a revolution that succe Women were everywhere in the revolution. Women participated in it, and many women were killed.Collection: Revolution
First of all, all writing includes some part of the self. The relationship of the self and the other exists in writing, whether autobiographical or novel. There is a self and an other.Collection: Writing
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.Collection: Country
There is not a revolution that succe Women are suffering because they are being excluded. The high military council excluded women from the committee to change the constitution.Collection: Military
The medical profession [in Egypt] is also very commercial. Health is not given to the poor. You know, if you have money, you have medical care; if you do not, then you are in trouble. I was not ready at all to build my economic security on the diseases of people, on suffering, especially of women and children. So, in a way, I rebelled against it.Collection: Children
All revolutions in history have obstacles.Collection: Revolution
There was not a single Islamic slogan [in Egypt]. 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.Collection: Strong
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.Collection: Medicine
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.Collection: Zero
Truth is relative, and there is always something missing in truth that prevents it from being perfect.Collection: Truth
Thus, after a period of about two thousand years the greatest crime became to worship a god other than the God of Moses, whereas injustice became a minor sin. I began to ask myself how this change had come about. Was it linked to a new order in which the female goddesses had been replaced by one male god?Collection: Order
All revolutions in history have obstacles. There is not a revolution that succes.Collection: Revolution
I've lived 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.Collection: Christian
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.Collection: Religious