Nawal El Saadawi Quotes

Know, first, who you are, and then adorn yourself accordingly.

Nobody makes me do anything I don't want to do. It's my decision. So the biggest devil is me. I'm either my best friend or my worst enemy. And that's how I have to deal with it.

This is the last time I'm asking you this,
Put my name at the top of your lips.
This is the last time I'm asking you why
You break my heart in the blink of an eye, eye, eye.

African music, though very old, is always being rediscovered in the West.

Clay is a good enough fighter, but it's unfortunate that he's a Black Muslim. A champion should represent all sects, not one.

I look at an ant and see myself: a native South African, endowed with a strength much greater than my size, so I might cope with the weight of racism that crushes my spirit.

You sound like a hillbilly; We want folk singers here.

I'm not a political singer. I don't know what the word means. People think I consciously decided to tell the world what was happening in South Africa. No! I was singing about my life, and in South Africa we always sang about what was happening to us — especially the things that hurt us.

Never mind, I'll find someone like you,
I wish nothing but the best for you, too.
Don't forget me, I beg.
I remember you said,
"Sometimes it lasts in love,
But sometimes it hurts instead.

I am what I am: an individual, unique and different, with a lineal history of an ancestral promptings and urgings, a history of dreams, desires, and of special experiences, of all of which I am the sum total.

I couldn't tell you because even I don't know who I am yet.

The Third World deserves freedom of speech just like everyone else. We want to fight the battle to say what we want, whether to be serious or just make fun of ourselves. That's what "Worldtown" is about, that's what "Paper Planes" is about. It's what people in the third world live through.

I am not ashamed of my past and don't intend to be ashamed of it.

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.

Hey! Hey, you! Fleeing away, eh? Aren't you ashamed of yourself? Wanna drag it to the last scene? Playing the tricks to have a bigger role, no?

I trapped my breath in the bellows of my throat, and a lamp blazed up inside, showing me who I really was. I crossed the darkness holding fast to that lamp.