Women Born In The 1920s

"“Teachers – at kindergarten level, as at university level – form a noble army accomplishing daily feats, never praised, never decorated. An army without drums, without gleaming uniforms. This army, thwarting traps and snares, everywhere plants the flag of knowledge and morality.”"

"“Each life has its share of heroism, an obscure heroism, born of abdication, of renunciation and acceptance under the merciless whip of fate.”"

"“Books saved you. Having become your refuge, they sustained you. The power of books, this marvelous invention of astute human intelligence. Various signs associated with sound: different sounds that form the word. Juxtaposition of words from which springs the idea, Thought, History, Science, Life. Sole instrument of interrelationships and of culture, unparalleled means of giving and receiving. Books knit generations together in the same continuing effort that leads to progress. They enabled you to better yourself. What society refused you, they granted.”"

"In the face of misogyny and injustice, the only hope is escape."

"“Friendship has splendors that love knows not. It grows stronger when crossed, whereas obstacles kill love. Friendship resists time, which wearies and severs couples. It has heights unknown to love.""

"“The word ‘happiness’ does indeed have meaning, doesn’t it? I shall go out in search of it.”"

"“The flavour of life is love. The salt of life is also love.”"

"A Toubab can’t be a proper daughter-in-law. She’ll only have eyes for her man. We’ll mean nothing to her."

"We saw everything through the same eyes before we were married… But now we seem to be divided over everything."

"Was he a possible partner for Mireille? Could he assume such a mutation."

"Love knows no bounds, but sometimes society does."

"Whenever he felt himself beginning to fancy any girl, after the Ouleymatou experience, the memory of her mocking indifference and his own disillusionment had made him fiercely determined to nip any emotional attachment in the bud."

"The truth can be a harsh and cruel reality."

"“A nervous breakdown waits around the corner for anyone who lets himself wallow in bitterness. Little by little, it takes over your whole being.”"

"Ousmane Gueye, who had mistrusted all women, threw himself at the mercy of a woman, and a white woman at that."

"“A woman must marry the man who loves her, but never the one she loves; that is the secret of lasting happiness.”"

"Children who seem unlikely to do well ... sometimes find that their work stays on the kitchen wall longer than usual; and so it was with me. I was encouraged to be creative past the usual age because I didn't have much else going for me. I was a skinny, plain, off-looking little girl, deaf in one badly damaged ear from a birth injury, and with a resulting atrophy of the facial muscles that pulled my mouth sideways whenever I opened it to speak and turned my smile into a sort of sneer. I was clever, or, as one of my teachers put it, "too clever for her own good," but not especially charming or affectionate or helpful. I couldn't seem to learn to ride a bike or sing in tune, and I was always the last person chosen for any team."

"You come to a certain age and you know there is no event that can ruin your life. Or completely change it."

"More than 64,000 Austrian Jews perished in the Holocaust. The fortunate were able to emigrate, but only after all their possessions had been seized. Several thousand Jewish children were saved and put onto the Kindertransport to Britain."

"The journey of my life has been the constant search for escape from the feelings of insecurity as a refugee, which has never gone away."

"Many refugees who fled Austria before or during the Second World War still refuse to set foot there. But I, a Kindertransport survivor, have no compunction about visiting my native country and cannot recall being made to feel uncomfortable there."

"[S]he once tripped over and fell, literally, into the arms of President Kennedy. In Washington, she was frequently mistaken for Henry Kissinger's wife. On one occasion after her plane, which was also carrying President Nixon, nearly crashed on the way to Minsk, an absent-minded subeditor bylined her Hella Pinsk."

"[Willy Brandt] said: "Come back to my hotel room and we can talk." I went back and we sat down and he asked about my background and we talked and we talked and we talked. I didn't get out until three in the morning and everyone on the Guardian thought: "She must have gone to bed with him." Well, she didn't go to bed with him but she became completely reconciled to Germany because she had got to know Willy Brandt."

"When I started work, women who were doing any kind of political foreign affairs reporting were really very, very thin on the ground. You could really name them all."

"We had mostly pilots in the hospital, [...] and kids who had been playing with bombs they found on the ground and stuff. Pretty harroing, actually but it was intriguing for me just to be meeting other people (en) it opened my mind to communism and things like that which shocked my family."

"But I was taught, or I must have heard it somewhere, that as it became a more important job, men started to get in on it. While it was just a background job, they let the women do it. But when people realized how interesting and creative editing could be, then the men elbowed the women out of the way and kind of took over. There were some wonderful women editors who helped inspire me to go into editing in England. In a way, I've never looked at myself as a woman in the business. I've just looked at myself as an editor. I mean, I'm sure I've been turned down because I'm a woman, but then other times I've been used because they wanted a woman editor."

"Jolly, chatty and extremely competent, she is an attractive, hearty person, the sort who can work all day and still have enough energy left to enjoy the evening. Anne taught me women often make better editors than men. They have more patience."

"[T]here were only certain jobs open to women. Things like hairdressing didn't really interest me. I might have been interested in photography, but women couldn't do that in those days. I found the most interesting job a woman could do, other than acting, was editing."

"I used to have to get my courage up to offer my ideas to David Lean, but that improved as time went on. He used to say to me, "That’s a ridiculous idea, I’ve never heard of such a thing." And I would feel awful. But then he would come up to me a day or two later and say, "You know that idea you had, it's not exactly that but it's close.” It was always worth putting up the ideas. I'm not crushed if they don't want to use them, it's a point of view."

"[Asked: "How did your famous match cut in Lawrence of Arabia — the cut from a close-up of Peter O’Toole blowing out a match to a wide shot of the sun rising over the desert — come about?"] By accident. When we were cutting Lawrence, we were working on film, and so when we were running the sequence, we saw it cut together. Nowadays using digital, you would have done a [dissolve] in the machine, and you never would have seen it cut together like it was. Almost at the same moment, David Lean and I looked at each other and said, "That’s a fabulous cut." He said, "It’s not quite perfect — take it away and make it perfect," and I literally took two frames off the outgoing shot, and that's the way it is today."

"[On out-takes during the filming of Becket featuring Richard Burton and Peter O'Toole, two notoriously heavy drinkers] Oh, on the beach, they were having a real problem sitting on their horses. It’s a beautiful shot of the beach and I go from a very long shot of galloping into a big head. I had fun with it, but it was difficult. Because they were flubbing their lines, we had to shoot over two days. The clouds are there one day but not the next, and nobody notices that because the actors are so magnetic. The horses were perfectly well behaved, but it was mainly the boys who were trouble."

"When I first came in I wanted to be a director and then later on I had opportunities to be a director and turned them down, because I was married to a director. I never edited for my husband. He did ask me to, but I think if you're there all day working on something, you want to be able to go home and say, "I just worked with that idiot director and guess what he did today!" You can't do that if you’re married to him."

"Women are mostly mothers and directors are mostly children, so the two go very well together."

"“The US Constitution is silent on social and economic rights: there is no Constitutional guarantee of a right to education, or to old-age pensions,”"

"“about reconceptualizing the way Americans think about health so as to uncover opportunities to increase the effectiveness of American health care.”"

"“the view that health care and social service investments may best be thought of as operating on a continuum, or perhaps even as two sides of the same coin.”"

"“What are the hallmarks of a patient? Let's see - passive, helpless, things are done sequentially, and well, that is not how people recover. That is not how people learn to live the lives they want or dream of.”"

"“One of the essential qualities of the clinician is interest in humanity, for the secret of the care of the patient is in caring for the patient.”"

"Was I proud to be a pioneer? Apart from my being the first woman guide I wasn’t that different from my peers. Women mountaineers went way back and then there was the generation immediately before me: role models who formed an all-women club three years before I was born."

"The best things about climbing? Unlimited space. I know where I am in mountains. The stillness: not silence because there is always some sound even if it’s no more than a breeze over rock, but there is no noise. Solitude is fine but, even better, just one companion: the other person on the rope with whom there is a bond that transcends any other relationship: trust, faith, an intimacy that is asexual but essential because in the last resort you are each responsible for the other’s life."

"This is not only a loss to us as a family, but to the nation of Botswana, SADC region and the world. My mother was a real treasure."

"But the basic pleasure in the hills is the natural environment which can be as fulfilling in later life as rock climbing was in one’s heyday. Equally dangerous when old (and particularly solo) and thus most satisfying to the spirit because the delight in challenges and the pleasure in calculating risks never dies."

"Writing, becoming a successful writer, was a different matter but not unique in the trade. We don’t choose a course in life; our genes dictate the route. I wasn’t born to be a climber and a writer, rather I was inclined to both genetically and the influences arrived: a supportive parent, a perceptive English teacher, favourite authors."

"Women need respect, support and opportunity not pity."

"The need to come together and pursue a common cause for our freedom is now, we must rise for the sake of Tanzania"

"She is one of the greatest players who ever lived. . . Martina couldn't touch her. I think she'd beat the Williams sisters."

"People thought I was ruthless, which I was. I didn't give a darn who was on the other side of the net. I'd knock you down if you got in my way."

"I was lean, mean, and hungry."

"Suddenly it dawned on me that my triumphs had not destroyed the racial barriers once and for all, as I had—perhaps naively—hoped. Or if I did destroy them, they had been erected behind me again."

"Being the Queen of Tennis is all well and good, but you can't eat a crown. Nor can you send the Internal Revenue Service a throne clipped to their tax forms...I reign over an empty bank account, and I'm not going to fill it by playing amateur tennis."