Nawal El Saadawi

Many people come here and they think my apartment is a poor relative to my name. But you cannot be radical and…

— Nawal El Saadawi

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

— Nawal El Saadawi

Home to me is the world because my books have been translated into more than 30 languages. People feel they know me…

— Nawal El Saadawi

Women were everywhere in the revolution. Women participated in it, and many women were killed. Then we had the right to speak…

— Nawal El Saadawi

The tracing of a child's lineage and its name with reference to the father, though it has lasted for many thousands of…

— Nawal El Saadawi

When I am in Egypt, I am phoned because I am listed in the medical directory under "Mental Health and Psychiatry." And…

— Nawal El Saadawi

We see our homeland more clearly when we are away from it than when we are in it.

— Nawal El Saadawi

Nothing is more perilous than truth in a world that lies.

— Nawal El Saadawi

There is not a revolution that succeeded in a few months. It takes years, even decades, to fulfill its goals. I am…

— Nawal El Saadawi

Women are half the society. You cannot have a revolution without women. You cannot have democracy without women. You cannot have equality…

— Nawal El Saadawi

Everybody has to die, Firdaus. I will die, and you will die. The important thing is how to live until you die.

— Nawal El Saadawi

“Throughout the thirty years of our life together the authorities have given us no respite. They were after us all the time.…

— Nawal El Saadawi

I was inspired by my life. I was inspired by the lives of many women doctors around me. So [Memoirs of a…

— Nawal El Saadawi

In history, the millions win; that is democracy.

— Nawal El Saadawi

To me, 'beauty' means to be natural, creative, honest - to say the truth.

— Nawal El Saadawi

When my second husband shouted, 'Me or your writing!' I replied, 'My writing.' We separated.

— Nawal El Saadawi

She is free to do what she wants, and free not to do it.

— Nawal El Saadawi

I am very much against makeup and high heels and all that we inherit as 'beauty.'

— Nawal El Saadawi

“One day when I woke up I found him reading my papers. It was as though he were violating my body. Maybe…

— Nawal El Saadawi

Here the oppression of women is very subtle. If we take female circumcision, the excision of the clitoris, it is done physically…

— Nawal El Saadawi

I have triumphed over both life and death because I no longer desire to live, nor do I any longer fear to…

— Nawal El Saadawi

Motherhood goes back in history to a time when a father had no way of knowing his children. Fatherhood only became known…

— Nawal El Saadawi

“I held her eyes in mind, took her hand in mine. The feeling of our hands touching was strange, sudden. It was…

— Nawal El Saadawi

What we require is not a formal return to tradition and religion, but a rereading, a reinterpretation, of our history that can…

— Nawal El Saadawi

We never know the reality of things: we see only what we are aware of. It is our consciousness that determines the…

— Nawal El Saadawi