"Sadat put me in prison along with some other men. Under Mubarak, I’ve been "gray-listed." Although there is no official order banning me, I can’t appear in the national media–it’s an unwritten rule. There is no chance for people like me to be heard by the people."

"How can I, Nawal El Saadawi, have an identity if my history is effaced? If my female ancestors are forgotten, buried in oblivion? If Ma'at, Isis, and Sekhmet are not spoken of? If Khadija the wife of Prophet Muhammad (who was the first to call him Prophet, to tell him not to fear or doubt but go on with courage) is not spoken of, although if it were not for her courage Islam might have been born not through him but perhaps through someone else. Is it I who decides what my identity is or those who have the power, and the money, and the arms and the media, and the global market and the multinational corporations in their hands?"

"In the Western media and in Western popular thinking, the term "fundamentalist" is almost restricted to Islamic groups, and yet the New World Order is characterized by the upsurge of so-called fundamentalist religious movements. Fundamentalism is a universal phenomenon, which increases with increasing poverty and racism."

"When I travel in the Arab countries, I notice that the TV screen often shows two contradictory images one after the other. A religious man talking about the need to veil women appears on the TV screen, and immediately following is a half-naked woman or belly dancer advertising some makeup or perfume. Girls and women in our countries are torn between these images. According to the moral and religious system, they are supposed to be veiled, but they are also supposed to be exposed and naked (fashionable, feminine, beautiful) in order to conform to the media advertisements and the global culture."

"All fundamentalists - whether Christian, Jewish, Muslim or otherwise - are partners in the attempt to breed division, strife, racism and sexism; they help international imperialism to maintain its control and to overcome popular resistance to policies that lead to war and increased exploitation. It is known that the Mafia of today in Italy and the USA and Canada has close connections with some international fundamentalist groups, some of which are Islamic. The economic resources of such groups are, like those of the Mafia, drawn from the sale of arms, trafficking in drugs, and speculation in foreign exchange; these activities"

"We are all born creative. Creativity is not a gift that comes to us from heaven. It is something inside us. We are born with it. Men and women, female and male, black and white, poor and rich. But we loose this creativity by the way we are brought up, by education, by the educational system. I teach creativity and dissidence and usually the first class when i go to my class, I tell them, I cannot teach creativity. I cannot teach dissident. But what I can do is to undo what education did to you"

"The woman sitting on the ground in front of me was a real woman, and the voice filling my ears with its sound, echoing in a cell where the window and door were tightly shut, could only be her voice, the voice of Firdaus."

"All my life I have been searching for something that would fill me with pride, make me feel superior to everyone else, including kings, princes and rulers."

"Every single man I did get to know filled me with but one desire: to lift my hand and bring it smashing down on his face."

"Do you prefer oranges or tangerines?"

"My work is not worthy of respect. Why then do you join in it with me?"

"Would I had phrases that are not known, utterances that are strange, in new language that has not been used, free from repetition, not an utterance that has grown stale, which men of old have spoken."

"For what has been said is just repetition, What has been said has been said."