Quotes from Naomi Alderman

I was four years old when my mother died. It's young enough that I might never think of her. Old enough that the knowledge would always be with me. And I don't. And it is.

she could kill them in three moves before they stirred in their comfortably padded chairs. It doesn't matter that she shouldn't, that she never would. What matters is that she could, if she wanted. The power to hurt is a kind of wealth.

We are modern. We live modern lives. All we demand is that women keep to their allotted areas; a woman is private, while a man is public. The correct mode for a man is speech, while the correct mode for a woman is silence. I've spent a long time proving that this isn't so. I've spent a long time insisting that no one else can tell me when to speak and when to remain silent. So much so that it's hard for me to tell when I want to be quiet.

There was a time when Esti thought that Ronit's face contained the world, but now, well, it's just a face. She's grateful for that, grateful for the change, because it's not good to see the world in a face that doesn't belong to you, that's always turning away from you.

the highest among us aren't always the wisest, and the older generation isn't always the best to judge what's right.

All beauty touches the human heart, be it only so small as an ant or a spider.

Children are born so small. It does not matter if they are boys or girls. They are all born so weak and so powerless.

the sound of the ocean is quiet as a mother shushing her baby,

There is a part on each of us which holds fast to the old truth: either you are the hunter or you are the prey. Learn which you are. Act accordingly. Your life depends upon it.

You can't put anyone into a box. Listen, even a stone isn't the same as any other stone, so I don't know where you all think you get off labeling humans with simple words and thinking you know everything you need.

I feel instinctively - and I hope you do, too - that a world run by men would be more kind, more gentle, more loving and naturally nurturing. Have you thought about the evolutionary psychology of it? Men have evolved to be strong worker homestead-keepers, while women - with babies to protect from harm - have had to become aggressive and violent. The few partial patriarchies that have ever existed in human society have been very peaceful places.

For more than two thousand years, the only people recopying were nuns in convents. I don't think it's at all a stretch to suggest that they picked works to copy that supported their viewpoint and just let the rest molder into flakes of parchment. I mean, why would they re-copy works that said men used to be stronger and women weaker? That would be heresy, and they'd be damned for it.

I don't smoke, not really. Only at parties, I'll steal someone else's, and I usually have a few in my bag, in case I'm walking down the street and I want to experience that New York feeling, of being one of those women who wear high-heeled boots and smoke cigarettes.

On some of those websire for deviants and abnormals, people are wondering what would happen if you got the women to try to wake the power up in men, if you taught them the techniques that are already being used on the training camps to strengthen the power in weaker women. Some of them are saying, Maybe more of us would have it if they tried . But most men aren't trying anymore, if they ever did. They don't want to be associated with this. With weirdness . With chromosomal irregularity.

My hand found the kitchen light switch before I could remember that I might not know where it was.

Death, the only inevitable item on the list of life, is nonetheless such a constant matter of human creativity.

There are those who believe all secrets to be guilty. If the truth is innocent, they declare, why can it not be revealed? The very existence of a secret indicates malice and wrongdoing. All should be open, all exposed.

U?ili vás poh?da? všetkým, ?ím ste, a túži? jedine po tom, aby ste boli mužom. U?ili vás lži.

Nothing worse has happened to him than to anyone. There is no reason for him to be afraid, no more reason than any other man.

Caligula's madness has encircled him so that although he rules an empire as wide as any ever known, he is entrapped within the labyrinth of his own mind. He cannot see beyond the horizons of his own loves and hatreds, his own family,

However complex you think it is, it is more complex than that.

A human being is made not by our own will but by that same organic, inconceivable, unpredictable, uncontrollable process that drives the unfurling leaves in season and the tiny twigs to bud and the roots to spread in tangled complications.

Mark said to me once, "She's like God to you: she inexplicably calms inexplicable fears.

But consider this: are patriarchies peaceful because men are peaceful? Or do more peaceful societies tend to allow men to rise to the top because they place less value on the capacity for violence? Just asking the question.