Quotes from Eve Ensler

People think that when you're connected with other people it's more painful. The opposite is true. When you're connected to the river you have despair, but you also have joy, and there's a flow in the river.

Since cancer, I feel like I have dreams rather than ambitions, visions rather than plans.

I was a waitress for nine years, which I don't regret at all. It taught me about discipline. I was always writing; it took a long time to make a career of it.

I think I've always had these two currents, equally strong, of wanting to change the world and make the world better and fight injustices and fight violence, and then being an artist, which is a very different strain.

Money doesn't make you special, it makes you lucky. Be generous, be crazy, be outrageous.

I think that's part of the whole denial and suicidal mechanism [ of the human's race] right "Oh my God, the house is on fire." You sleep through the smoke.

I wake up every day and I think, 'I'm breathing! It's a good day.'

I think of the security of cages. How violence, cruelty, oppression, become a kind of home, a familiar pattern, a cage, in which we know how to operate and define ourselves.

I don't get tired, because every time a woman doesn't die or doesn't get beaten or doesn't get raped or doesn't get honor-killed or doesn't get acid-burned, it's a huge victory.

Real security is contemplating death, not pretending it doesn't exist.

When you destroy a population, once femicide happens, we're going to see the end of humanity, because I don't know how you sustain a future without vitalised women.

My commitment originated in my own story and my own relationship to violence.

The only point of having power it seems to me is to empower others. The only point of leadership is to inspire.

It's a weird thing about the truth: It protects you. What really makes you vulnerable is when you're lying because you're going to get caught. When you tell the truth, there's a strange relief that comes.

Whatever culture, whatever country, girls are taught to please others as opposed to pleasing themselves.

I have been a depressed person most of m life. I was always in the throes of self-hatred.

I think when people begin to tell their stories, everything changes, because not only are you legitimised in the telling of your story and are you found, literally, like you matter, you exist in the telling of your story, but when you hear your story be told, you suddenly exist in community and with others.

The minute someone tells you you have cancer, it's kind of like you die. You really do die. It's like you get that you're mortal.

Cherish your solitude. Take trains by yourself to places you have never been. Sleep out alone under the stars. Learn how to drive a stick shift. Go so far away that you stop being afraid of not coming back. Say no when you don't want to do something. Say yes if your instincts are strong, even if everyone around you disagrees. Decide whether you want to be liked or admired. Decide if fitting in is more important than finding out what you're doing here. Believe in kissing.

I finally know the difference between pleasing and loving, obeying and respecting. It has taken me so many years to be okay with being different, and with being this alive, this intense. (xxvi)

Go so far away that you stop being afraid of not coming back.

When you rape, beat, maim, mutilate, burn, bury, and terrorize women, you destroy the essential life energy on the planet.

The heart is capable of sacrifice. So is the vagina. The heart is able to forgive and repair. It can change it's shape to let us in. It can expand to let us out. So can the vagina. It can ache for us and stretch for us, die for us and bleed and bleed us into this difficult, wondrous world. So can the vagina. I was there in the room. I remeber.

Good is towing the line, being behaved, being quiet, being passive, fitting in, being liked, and great is being messy, having a belly, speaking your mind, standing up for what you believe in, fighting for another paradigm, not letting people talk you out of what you know to be true.