Businesswomen From England

"“The mindset of a sailor is very different to the mindset of people who live on land.”"

"The thing that you need to do when you’re under threat is to be incredibly calm, because it’s only when you’re calm that you can think rationally and get through things."

"“The best leaders can be both resilient and humble.”"

"When I hire people, I look for evidence of both characteristics. Candidates who have experienced situations where things have gone wrong, often have strong resilience."

"“It’s good to have someone completely different to you to chat about things with.”"

"“People are a bit reluctant to reveal what is going on in their world. And others are nervous talking about it because they don’t know what to say and don’t want to look silly.”"

"“You spend half your energy hiding the reality, leading a dual life, making excuses. There’s a lovely story about someone in the industry who was born male and was male at work but had a female persona in her personal life. She was outed because of technology linking Facebook photos and her iPhone. After years of being a man at work but actually being a woman it was fantastic. Everybody was supportive; she’s never looked back.”"

"“I decided to come out during the interview process so that I wasn’t going into it with any secrets. I just brought it up with the group CEO and he was fine. You think, why did it take so long? That’s why I encourage everyone to do it.”"

"“I gave a clear instruction to my partner not to phone me in the office because I was so worried about my colleagues suspecting that I was having a relationship with a woman.”"

"“I tried to be something I wasn’t. I behaved like a man.”"

"It’s interesting, they feel awkward. That’s why when I talk about this I say let’s use the words that people are uncomfortable using – lesbian, gay."

"What you do is, you de-genderise every statement you make. You’re in a business environment; you de-gender everything, You never say he or she. You do it constantly. All these little things, that if you haven’t experienced you just wouldn’t appreciate. And suddenly you can be free"

"I said ‘I’m coming out, I can’t live with this’"

"It’s not about me. It’s about what you do for other people. For me, it’s so important because you need these role models."

"Let’s use the words people are uncomfortable using – lesbian, gay"

"“The trap that companies can sometimes fall into is to dump large amounts of information onto the board.”"

"When I consider such candidates, I look for people who tell me survivor stories, not victim stories."

"It is pretty similar to being the CEO of a public listed company but you’ve got to get thousands of people to do what you want without them being your employees. That was a really tough challenge"

"“If we are leaders, we try to give the answers all the time instead of spending time asking people how they are feeling"

"If we can get this gender thing right, we can then get it right for all sorts of other groups that feel perhaps marginalized or under-represented, particularly in the senior levels in the workplace."

"I look back at that 32-year old Inga, and I don't recognize her now-but that was how under-confident I was. I don't think I was ready or good enough to take the job."

"I can remember, it was in the 1990s and I had been working in the insurance for about 14 years and I was offered my first promotion. This was going to be the first time I was going to manage one person at work, and do you know what? I said'No'."

"“People don’t know who to trust any more. So, we’ve got to find another mechanism to include much bigger parts of the population, and use different metrics to measure success of a country.”"

"When I took the role of CEO, I was basically running the entire ma"

"My father wanted to be a hero and my mother wanted to be with my father, and once you get those two pieces in place, it was kind of as simple as that."

"I want to die with my boots on. English actors have a great reputation for longevity."

"I cannot analyze all the things that endear this country to me. For one, you don't have the 'great public school' system by which one class gets the good breaks and gets them first. I hope the war will do away with that caste idea."

"As quoted in "Anna Lee Likes Our Ways; Will Be Citizen" by Julia McCarthy, New York Daily News (March 5, 1943), p. 24"

"On Seven Sinners, Marlene Dietrich was the boss. She took one look at me on my first day and stated, "I vill not vork vit anutter blonde." So I had to go to the beauty shop and get my hair dyed mud brown."

"John Ford came in and I was very scared of him. A rough character. I heard he despised the English, so I invented an Irish grandfather and told tales to him that simply were not true. [...] I found Ford to be a very curmudgeonly taskmaster, but always very fair. He always knew what he wanted in a scene. He never overshot. God help you if you didn't deliver what he wanted. And he liked me well enough that I finally told him that my Irish grandfather was fictional. He roared over that one. We've been close friends ever since. He used me a lot over the next few decades."

"He didn't direct you. He never told you what to do. He would talk to you, mostly about something completely different, and you find yourself doing the right thing. It was really very spooky—what he did."

"John Wayne was such a nice man, but he was always a lttle shy with women, particularly blondes. As for Boris, he was a lovely man. We used to have great fun reciting poetry to each other."

"I came to the understanding that individually we are responsible for the way in which we live and for the care of our human frame by good nutrition, proper exercise and a balanced lifestyle. It is this, together with a strong focused mind, that enables us to draw from our vast inner resources and strength to make the most of our time on this planet. The changes in my life came by way of a massive physical and psychological shock and were implemented for the purpose of healing and motivating my recovery. A change in our diet and lifestyle of course can be started at any time, and is of interest to anybody wishing to maximise their health and vitality, leading to a more fulfilling life. This was how I discovered the benefits of cutting meat and dairy from my diet and then taking the correct care of my body’s nutritional requirements to help heal my mind, body and soul."

"We also know that Julian too received frequent visitors, as is attested by the autobiography of another fervent Christian of her time, Margery Kempe, who went to Norwich in 1413 to receive advice on her spiritual life"

"Given this mixture of affective and schizophrenic features a modern psychiatric diagnosis for Margery Kempe would most likely be ‘schizoaffective psychosis’, precipitated in the first instance by childbirth"

"Kempe was psychotic for much of her adult life...Kempe continued to have psychotic symptoms throughout the remainder of her life...[her] account provides the modern reader with a unique opportunity to hear the voice of a woman with serious mental illness who lived 600 years ago"

"Kempe describes, in this extract and elsewhere, what could be construed as classic psychotic symptoms; visions, auditory, olfactory and tactile hallucinations, grandiose delusions, self-neglect (Margery’s penances of fasting, being inadequately clothed), social withdrawal (from her family and friends), and feelings of passivity and control. Yet it does not feel like madness. Why not? What Kempe describes to us is a truly embodied spiritual experience. Kempe has no doubt about this, and it is this unshakeable belief that communicates itself down the centuries through the text...the question remains as to how Kempe manages to convey the phenomenological intensity of Margery’s experience twenty or more years after the event? First, Kempe is an expert storyteller, and it is likely that she retold such narratives as discussed here on many occasions to many people, clergy and fellow pilgrims, through oral testimony and public performance. Second, central to the orthodox liturgy, is the conception that devotional words uttered are expressed through the senses. Extreme emotion which, in modern times, is viewed as a sign of mental instability, was a fundamental feature of spirituality, conveying both the seriousness and truth of the religious experience...With this knowledge, when we return to Kempe’s text, we can listen to Margery’s voice within a framework more akin to medieval England than the twentieth century West. Margery’s sensory experiences are not without cultural and historical provenance, rather she draws upon a range of mystical sources grounded in religious and cultural traditions known throughout medieval Europe. Kempe’s embodied descriptions cease to be tactile or olfactory hallucinations or grandiose ideas (marriage to God), but become experiences that result from spiritual passion. As Porter argues “it would serve no purpose to label such exercise of spiritual discipline as a psychiatric disorder” (Porter, 1988: 44). As argued earlier, religiosity was sanity, whereas madness amounted to a refusal to accept the truth that was God. Furthermore, Margery’s experiences are intelligible not only in terms of religious traditions, but also in her terms of her career; Kempe construes Margery as a holy mystic"

"The Book of Margery Kempe tells the story of one woman’s spiritual journey in Medieval England over a twenty-five year period, describing her quest to establish spiritual authority as a result of her personal conversations with Jesus and God. Whilst the text is written in the third person, it is generally acknowledged to be the first autobiography written in the English language...Kempe’s story relates not only Margery’s struggle to achieve some form of divine spirituality, but also her polarised reception within society. Some, most notably religious authority figures, revered Margery as a holy mystic, whilst others, mainly commoners, rejected and slandered her as a devil worshiper."

"Margery was more of a religious hysteric than a mystic. But she gives a vibrant account of her life as a woman to whom religion and weeping were as attractive as sex was to the Wife of Bath."

"As an intimate record of personal religious experience it has few equals. The marks of accuracy, sincerity, and reality are stamped on every page."

"Sometimes she felt sweet smells with her nose; it was sweeter, she thought, than ever was any sweet earthly thing that she smelled before…Sometimes she heard with her bodily ears such sounds and melodies that she might not well hear what a man said to her in that time unless he spoke the louder. These sounds and melodies had she heard nearly every day for the term of twenty-five years…She saw with her bodily eye many white things flying all about her on every side, as thick in a manner as motes in the sun; they were right delicate and comfortable, and the brighter that the sun shone …Also our Lord gave her another token, which endured about sixteen years, and it increased ever more and more, and that was a flame of fire wonderfully hot and delectable and right comfortable, not wasting but ever increasing of flame, for, though the weather was never so cold, she felt the heat burning in her breast and at her heart, and verily as a man should feel the material fire if he put his hand or his finger therein"

"Sche cam beforn the Erchebischop and fel down on hir kneys, the Erchebischop seying ful boystowsly unto hir, "Why wepist thu so, woman?" Sche, answeryng, seyde, "Syr, ye schal welyn sum day that ye had wept as sor as I.""

"Pacyens is more worthy than myraclys werkyng."

"On a nygth, as this creatur lay in hir bedde wyth hir husbond, sche herd a sownd of melodye so swet and delectable, hir thowt, as sche had ben in paradyse. And therwyth sche styrt owt of hir bedde and seyd, "Alas, that evyr I dede synne, it is ful mery in hevyn.""

"Get rid of those terrible jeans that everybody else wears. And wear something different for a change, so you don't just look like a clone."

"[Meat industry] truly is a disgusting industry, all the more so because it’s hidden. Have you ever seen animals being shipped to abattoirs? Do you even know where these abattoirs are? Have you ever seen an animal getting killed for the food you eat? It’s a dark, dark, dark trade that nobody really knows about, and a hugely profitable one at that. … If I don’t believe in killing animals, why on earth would I do it for the sake of fashion … I don’t think there’s any difference, because at the end of the day you’re killing an animal and stripping its skin off its body. It’s somebody’s baby – or it has a baby – it breathes, it lives, it has emotions, it has feelings … I find it fascinating that leather and fur are so often associated with the top luxury level of fashion. And yet leather, in this day and age, is probably cheaper than a piece of cotton. So there’s such a tiny price put on an animal’s life."

"My mum was Jewish. Maybe I'm a really bad Jew because I'm always so excited to say that I am, but I don't live and breathe the religion."

"From afar, I have long admired Stella McCartney … who has never used animal products in her eponymous brand and who has catalyzed the development of new luxury products that gorgeously resemble leather, fur or skin, but aren’t. Stella has also taken tremendous risks for her principles, including making clear to Gucci from the beginning she would not work with leather, a bold statement to an iconic fashion house arguably synonymous with leather, particularly from a then 29-year-old designer. … Stella is now known as a fashion designer, and one particularly adept at designing for women in all of our various moods, ambitions, roles and for every season. … Her aesthetics are as consistent as her ethics – across space and time, a Stella McCartney is as recognizable as a Stella McCartney."

"Stella’s work has helped to redefine and recalibrate our thinking … Higher-end brands have said they couldn’t exist without fur. Stella proves, of course you can."