Eve Ensler Quotes

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

One of the most radical things women can do is to love their body.

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

When we give in the world what we want the most, we heal the broken part inside each of us.

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

Give voice to what you know to be true, and do not be afraid of being disliked or exiled. I think that's the hard work of standing up for what you see.

I think so much of neoliberalism and capitalism has caused people to live in a state of greed, fear and consumption that is covering up so much of what we really want.

If you are divided from your body, then you are divided from the body of the world.

I think the greatest illusion we have is that denial protects us. It's actually the biggest distortion and lie. In fact, staying asleep is what's killing us.

You have to give to the world the thing that you want the most, in order to fix the broken parts inside you.

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.

When you listen to other women’s stories, you begin to understand your own better, and you begin to find ways back through and with each other.

We have not yet made violence against women abnormal, extraordinary, unacceptable. We have not yet come to see it as a pathological issue.

Geography does not define you - love does.

In the United States, the last recorded clitoridectomy for curing masturbation was performed in 1948--on a five year old girl.

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.

Dance is holy, sexual, and it's a way of being very powerful and a little dangerous without being violent.

I'm in good shape. My cancer means I have lost a lot of organs and I'm a lot lighter. I have devoted myself to yoga and I'm doing handstands.

I honestly never understood how violence against women became a women's issue. 95 percent of the violence men are doing to women.

There is just so much excess in terms of the market for self-remodeling. I think most women are perfectly gorgeous and beautiful the way they are.

Everything you deny is actually killing you on some level. You see something, you feel something wrong with your body, you pretend it's not happening, it goes on, it grows, it gets worse.

To have insurance and have a diagnosis and to have doctors, I just felt it would be immoral on some level to complain.

Unless men are active allies, we'll never end violence against women and girls.

The cancer in me became an awareness of the cancer that is everywhere. The cancer of cruelty, the cancer of carelessness, the cancer of greed.

Writing and giving voice to what I am feeling makes me happy. And supporting people in finding their voice, passion, outrage and resistance. There is nothing better than that.

I think that anytime you get clear about what your mission is or what your focus wants to be, things start to come together in your life.

I want to read so I can read the Koran read the signs in the street know the number of the bus I'm supposed to take when I one day leave this house.

…find freedom, aliveness, and power not from what contains, locates, or protects us, but from what dissolves, reveals, and expands us.

stop fixing your bodies and start fixing the world!

I'm feeling a kind of liberty to write about what's interesting to me without worrying about what I should be writing about. And that feels good.

It seems to me that we spend an inordinate amount of time and attention on fixing ourselves when we could really be directing that out to serving others.

When you bring consciousness to anything, things begin to shift.

The devastation of neoliberalism is so multi-fold, whether it's violence against women or desperate economic inequality or the destruction of the planet.

We must stop being polite and behaved and find new inventive tactics to shift the paradigm. We are the majority.

Danger lurks when people are dissociated and detached from their own story or feelings.

Security is elusive. It's impossible. We all die. We all get old. We all get sick. People leave us. People change us. Nothing is secure.

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

You will touch this joy and you will suddenly know it is what you were looking for your whole life, but you were afraid to even acknowledge the absence because the hunger for it was so encompassing.

I despise charity. It gives crumbs to a few and silences the others.

Three of the ten principles governing the City of Joy are (a) tell the truth, (b) stop waiting to be rescued, and (c) give away what you want the most.

Today the United States has the highest prison population in the world, over 2.1 million people. ... We lock people up at a rate that is seven to ten times that of any other democracy.

I really want to help stop violence toward women.

Once you are diagnosed with cancer, time changes. It both speeds up insanely and stops altogether.

The love is all around us. I made a life of love.

For many years now, I feel like my own body struggle has been linked and connected with women I meet in the world. I think we're in this together.

It is almost a guarantee that in the pursuit of security you will become more insecure. Inherent in the quest for security is its undoing.

What I have found is that even when you try to transform existing structures they are so powerful they often overwhelm, seduce, and control you.

Why don't we bring everyone up to be caring and compassionate, to believe that we are connected with everyone and everything around us?

I think the human species is very suicidal.

I'd stop calling it "chemotherapy." I'd call it "transformational juice." Infusion suites would become "transformational suites" or "journey rooms."