Quotes from Naomi Alderman

I've only got anywhere with Minecraft by getting my friends to explain it.

No one in tech has ever been as sexist toward me as teachers and rabbis before I was 12 years old.

For millennia, human beings have been finding new ways to look at the world through each others' eyes: from projecting ourselves onto the characters in novels or movies to dressing up in costume to devouring the details of some celebrity's life in 'Hello' or 'OK.'

The hilarity or brilliance of a forwarded link is inversely proportional to the number of people it's sent to.

I hope that there are many more women out there writing bits of feminist sci-fi. And men, also - men are allowed to write feminist things.

I've always been a reader of science fiction, and I have loved a lot of feminist science fiction.

What makes 'The Handmaid's Tale' so terrifying is that everything that happens in it is plausible.

No one should ever feel obliged to speak or to put themselves out publicly online, but I do think it's a good thing to do. The more of us who are women, making our work and just going 'Here I am, here's my work,' the easier it gets for everybody. It's a good thing to do.

I used to think there was something cheap in trying to make beautiful sentences. Now I think language has its own ways and ends, and it does one's thinking good to try to serve them. Beauty isn't truth. But a certain kind of clear beauty will help in the pursuit of truth.

I wish it were true that every child had access to an education that helped them reach their full potential.

I was there on 9/11. I watched the towers falling from my office window, at which point I decided I would give up my job at a law firm in Manhattan and come back to the U.K.

I'd been to an Orthodox Jewish primary school where, every morning, the boys said, 'Thank you God for not making me a woman.' If you put that together with 'The Handmaid's Tale' in your head, something will eventually go fizz! Boom!

In general, I'd rather ask questions and look stupid than keep quiet and not understand what someone's talking about.

If you hold strong convictions against gay marriage, you shouldn't apply for a job as a registrar.

I am a geek, and proud of it.

I honestly can't think of many more truly romantic gestures than a really well-thought-through prenuptial agreement.

The truth is, none of us is OK, not really. The best, most dear, most thoughtful and engaged and open and feminist men in my life have occasionally come out with some statement that's made me gasp. Then again, so have almost all the women.

My parents are both intellectuals and readers; my mother would take me to the library every few days from before I was one year old.

After the novel was published, I came to feel that I couldn't call myself Orthodox anymore. It's so patriarchal, anti-women, anti-gay. There was something about writing 'Disobedience'... it felt like I had put it all in the book. I had done my best by it, recorded what it meant for me. I felt I was done.

I hated sports at school. Almost everyone did.

I get migraines. I've had them all my life; so has my dad. So did his grandmother, although back then they called them 'sick headaches.'

I hate to be one of those people who forwards links to 'hilarious pictures' or 'brilliant games' to half their contacts database.

I wish that positions of power dependent on education were as open to abused children, poor children, working-class children as they are to the children of the rich and successful. I really wish that were true.

Our body is there right now. You did not have to earn a thing. It is a gift. You are a hero every time you step out of your front door to do some exercise.