Women Authors

"“There are times, though, that no matter how much food I eat, I find the food does nothing for me, like I am hungry for my country and nothing is going to fix that.”"

"“The problem with English is this: You usually can't open your mouth and it comes out just like that--first you have to think what you want to say. Then you have to find the words. Then you have to carefully arrange those words in your head. Then you have to say the words quietly to yourself, to make sure you got them okay. And finally, the last step, which is to say the words out loud and have them sound just right.”"

"As for the coldness, I have never seen it like this. I mean, coldness that makes like it wants to kill you, like it's telling you, with its snow, that you should go back to where you came from."

"I am starting to talk fast now, and I have to remember to slow down because when I get excited, I start to sound like myself and my American accent goes away."

"“When things fall apart, the children of the land scurry and scatter like birds escaping a burning sky.”"

"Understand that your mental health is real."

"Understand your vision and stick with it."

"You have to be determined within yourself."

"I am who I am today because somebody believed in me."

"The only thing is to be original. You have to be yourself."

"Botswana is a country of morals, respect and pride. It is truly a beautiful peaceful country that has earned its name in the global village."

"Self-confidence is key. You do not have to have the best shoes or a designer dress; you just have to be true to yourself."

"The President said the nation is proud of her work of promoting equality and empowerment for girls and women. "Congratulations @TereraiTrent who has been honoured as one of the 10 most inspiring women in the world, part of the "Sculpted for Equal Rights" initiative. All the people of Zimbabwe are deeply proud of you & your work in promoting equality & empowerment for girls & women," the President wrote."

"Even after becoming a child bride who had three children by the time she was eighteen, Trent eventually earned multiple degrees, and a prominent global platform. A platform where she has interacted with world leaders and international businesses and audiences to advocate for universal access to quality education."

"Zimbabwean humanitarian, scholar, educator, and author, Dr Tererai Trent is one of the world’s most internationally recognized voices for quality education and women’s empowerment."

"As a child growing up in poverty, I witnessed how community consistently prioritize boys over girls in education because they felt boys had more chances to get job opportunities, These experiences made me want to write a story that decisively validates the value of giving educational opportunities to girls."

"We are strong already, but together we are stronger."

""Your dreams in life will have deeper meaning when they are tied to the greater good.”"

"I am just humbled- it is unbelievable. Can you believe I am standing so tall in New York City? We know that 3% of statues in the city are female. My great-grandmother, my grandmother, my mother - ha - they would never have dreamt of something like this."

"I am incredibly honored to be standing among the World’s Top 10 Most Inspiring Women ‘Sculpted for Equal Rights’! Can you believe this rural Zimbabwean girl and just looking back where I came from to think I will have a life size statue standing in the streets of NYC! My goodness! The list includes Oprah Winfrey, Pink, Nicole Kidman, Jane Goodall, Cate Blanchett, Janet Mock, Tracy Dyson, Cheryl Strayed and Gabby Douglas."

"Wherever you are in life, despite challenges and difficulties, your dreams will always call you and remind you who you are and what you want to become."

"These girls are married off before they are able to define themselves. I come from this line of women who have been married very young before they could define the lives they wanted for themselves."

"Marrying off a girl at age 11 is not marriage at all, it is rape, often people ask me how it felt. Honestly how am I supposed to feel? It is horrible having four children by the age of 18. Honestly what am I supposed to say? However, I maintain that I am not a victim; I am part of the solution."

"...Irene Sabatini created two unforgettable fictional characters who leapt off the page.—Bernardine Evaristo"

"Allow this book to take you on a journey that will capture both your head and your heart."

"But that’s what’s great about books- they carry you up, out and away, lifting you away from the mundane to the extra ordinary."

"I think that literature, when it’s good, as opposed to journalism, gives you the freedom to be the characters, to enter into their lives, their psyche and so their experiences become, in a way, yours."

"The writing seemed to just spiral out of me, and if I had to pick a time when I really started this journey it would be that wonderful quiet morning on a verandah so many years ago in the Colombian countryside..."

"How my imagination soared — the moon seemed so close that I felt I could reach out and touch it. And then my mind wandered: what are those noises outside?"

"My experience of Singapore has always been the duality of it. On the surface, it’s so Westernized and cosmopolitan… but underneath it, there are all these layers of deep-rooted conservatism that highly influence life in Singapore. I wanted to show that [duality]."

"When I see all the immigration policies that are happening and the way this country [United States] is treating refugees, for me to say, ‘I’m an expat, not an immigrant, and therefore I can turn a blind eye,’ that’s not a moral and ethical way to live."

"I really love that slogan “Empowerment through Entertainment”. Literature is really the only art form that lets readers access the deepest thoughts and emotions of a character. It's so powerful to be able to understand and empathize with a character who on the surface may seem completely different from you."

"Essay writing is very difficult for me. Part of it may be that I grew up in a very private family. You know how in Asian families you don't air your dirty laundry? Additionally, I think I've always been drawn to writing because I love to imagine, so fiction seems the natural fit. I love imagining settings and characters and situations, and I guess essay writing doesn't fulfill me in the same way."

"I tried as much as possible not to view my characters through a modern lens. Obviously it’s very difficult to put aside my personal biases and experiences, but I tried not to psychoanalyze my characters from the vantage point of 2018. I tried not to impose my own beliefs onto them, and I tried not to let whatever was happening around me color the way that I was telling the story."

"I’m Singaporean and I’m Chinese, so, yes, food is a big part of my life and of my writing. Because I write mainly Asian characters and settings for a predominantly American audience, food is just one more way to explore my characters’ cultures and customs in a manner that (I hope) never feels forced."

"My favorite part of my job is never having to doubt that I’m doing something of value. And I don’t mean this in the global sense; there are more practical ways to help people. But I do think that--and this may be selfish--I am working at something that’s making me a better human."

"As a novelist, my job is to play a role as an endoscope to look inside of a person, while also showing him or her with an external camera."

"My grandfather was born and raised in a small town called Miryang in Gyeongsangnam-do, South Korea. He was a long-distance runner on the Japan National Team in Korea, which was then a colony of Japan. He was likely to get a spot on the team for the Tokyo Olympics, which was scheduled to be held in 1940, but then the Olympics was canceled due to World War II. The Korean Peninsula was liberated from colonial rule by Japan’s defeat in the war, but the joy of independence was covered over by ideological confrontations. Due to the Korean War that broke out in 1950, Miryang, where my grandfather’s family lived, became a battlefield where residents informed on and killed each other. My grandfather’s 23-year-old brother, who was a leader of the student movement, was hit in the leg while running in the schoolyard and taken away by the police; his whereabouts are still unknown. My grandfather was also accused of being a communist and was imprisoned, but just before his execution he broke out of jail and escaped to Japan on his own. My grandmother boarded a small fishing boat with her four children, including my mother, and smuggled them into Japan as refugees. When my grandfather, who due to the war ran off with just the clothes on his back and lived a life with what seem like constant emergency crash landings, realized that he had cancer and was going to die soon, he went back to the small town in Korea where he was born, and he died there at age 68."

"The word "interview" is written as taking material. If you come in contact with it like you want to take such material, it will be transmitted. So, instead of taking material, you are I think it's all about listening with the desire to know and listen to your story."

"I think that the role of a writer is to listen to the voices of the voiceless. It’s my job to listen to the voices of the spirits of those who die in the midst of discrimination, poverty, and loneliness, unable to bring anyone’s attention to their suffering. We can’t save the dead, but by listening, we can give comfort to their spirits. By listening to their suffering, we can bandage their burning, bleeding skin, no matter how many tears that bandage might have or how patched together it might be."

"I used to think life was like a book: you turn the first page, and there’s the next, as you go on turning page after page, eventually you reach the last one. But life is nothing like a story in a book. There may be words, and the pages may be numbered, but there is no plot. There may be an ending, but there is no end."

"I’m often asked, why would you move where there was a nuclear accident on purpose? I started writing novels when I was eighteen years old, and since then, in interivews, I’m always asked, “Why do you write? Who are writing for?” And I always answer, “I write for the people who don’t belong anywhere.” That might have roots in the fact, in the Korean War, my family left Korea and came to Japan, that my family has wandered from place to place, that I was expelled from school, so I come from a place of not belonging, and perhaps I started writing in order to make a place where I belonged in the world of novels and plays. That’s why I write for people who don’t belong."

"Getting to freedom is only half the battle. Many North Koreans are separated from their families, and when they arrive in a new country, they start with little or no money. So we can benefit from the international community for education, English language training, job training, and more. We can also act as a bridge between the people inside North Korea and the outside world. Because many of us stay in contact with family members still inside, and we send information and money that is helping to change North Korea from inside."

"The imbalances of our political, social, cultural, spiritual condition must be turned into revolutionary action to overthrow this corrupt system of dutch colonial exploitation."

"For too long, it was taken for granted that we would survive because we were Dutch; because Holland would take care of us. In our ignorant innocence or innocent ignorance we overlooked the fact that they were, and historically are, the rulers and we the ruled ones, and that power never renders itself; it has to be conquered, if not by sword then by the mind. And we neglected the mind. We have not studied our rulers well enough, otherwise we would have known that we were programmed to think that we are not programmed; that if we looked the other way long enough and denied the existence of colonialism it would automatically disappear. We forgot that we were trained not to see colonialism as colonialism."

"I’m very proud of being a woman, and as a woman, I don’t even like the word feminism because when I hear that word, I associate it with women trying to pretend to be men, and I’m not interested in trying to pretend to be a man. I don’t want to embrace manhood, I want to embrace my womanhood."

"I think that being isolated from the Hollywood world of premieres and red carpet events was probably good for me because I could ease into those at will and by my own choice. But in other aspects, when it comes to fanfare Hawaii is nuts and in L.A. they're all so jaded. They don't care. They see another star and it's like, 'oh yeah, we've seen a hundred of them before. You're a dime a dozen'. Which is a little bit easier to deal with."

"It’s funny, because there’s a lot of fear in Hollywood about ever being typecast, and I kind of feel like, “Man, if you’re going to be typecast, what better to be typecast as a kick-ass chick?” I try to put my stamp on these strong female characters, which is the idea that they’re strong because of their compassion, they’re strong because of their vulnerability, they’re strong because of their emotion and they’re strong in spite of their fear. And that’s why I do get involved very heavily in the creative process because I think it’s a dangerous trap that sometimes male writers can find themselves getting into where they’re trying to create a strong woman, but they actually don’t know what female strength looks like. They don’t know what it means and so they create strength that looks manly. And I think it’s really important that young women and women of all ages see female characters that represent true femininity and that that isn’t weak, but that’s strong."

"The only way to want millions of people invading your life is to be off your rocker. This industry is conducive to cuckoo. It likes cuckoo. It encourages cuckoo. I've had to find my sanity."

"Authentic is one of my least favourite words because in such a diverse country, whose authenticity are you talking about?"