Eve Ensler Quotes

I think that's part of the whole denial and suicidal mechanism [ of the human's race] right "Oh my God, the house is on fire." You sleep through the smoke.

I think we have to get bolder. Why after Fukushima didn't we all go out and shut down all the nuclear power plants and stay there until it happened?

I think to be cut off from your heart is the greatest tyranny in the world.

I believe in irony. And if V-Day has taught me anything, it's that if you go out with artistic, outrageous irony and humor, people are drawn to it.

I think what all of us have in common is that we've been taught and trained and programmed to focus on fixing and mutilating ourselves. That's a core reason why women do not have power in the world.

In America, we have a government that is now run by white nationalists, by billionaires, by incredible misogynists.

What I'm really interested in is freedom.

I think we have a tendency in America to keep dividing ourselves, separating ourselves from each other.

I have been struggling to find my way back into my body my whole life.

Our bodies are critical. If I learned anything from getting really bad cancer seven years ago, it's that your body is what you've got. If you don't take care of it, you're not going to be here.

I feel passionate about nurses. I would do anything for nurses. Anything.

I am so grateful to be alive. It's ridiculous to be alive.

I think we are seeing the absolute and utter collapse of male politicians in this [U.S] country and we're seeing what the underpinnings of the power structure are, which are sexist underpinnings.

I think the thing that has always made me happy is being in the struggle, in a community of struggle with other people.

There's an underlying puritanicalness in America that is not that different to the prudishness of Britain - it just manifests itself in different ways.

Some days I would get so exhausted, nauseous, in pain - just from going back through things. It's almost as if I had the experience and then the meta-experience.

You have visits, then you have disappearances. You enter, then you exit. You come, you go. It would be so great if you could just get to human enlightenment on a linear path.

There were momentary visitations. I was a visitor, not an inhabitant. I think I say that at the beginning of the book: "I have made visits to the earth in my body, but it's always been as a visitor."

Cherish your solitude. Take trains by yourself to places you have never been. Sleep out alone under the stars.

Success itself doesn't give you happiness. It's what you do with your success that gives you happiness.

I think violence against women in America has become ordinary - it's been made absolutely acceptable.

I think one of the problems with the capitalist mainstream is this: no matter what you create to respond or resist it they will buy it.

If you were around in the '60s, you already know that music and art and love are a critical part of the revolution. This is how we fight.

We're in a crisis. We're in a crisis like I don't think America has ever known in my lifetime. But we have to keep joy in our lives, love in our lives, poetry in our lives, dancing in our lives.

I think of the security of cages. How violence, cruelty, oppression, become a kind of home, a familiar pattern, a cage, in which we know how to operate and define ourselves.

I bet you're worried. I was worried. I was worried about vaginas. I was worried about what we think about vaginas, and even more worried that we don't think about them.

Dance has a transformative effect on bodily trauma.

Security isn't what I hunger for. I hunger for change. I hunger for connection.

The minute someone tells you you have cancer, it's kind of like you die. You really do die. It's like you get that you're mortal.

The only point of having power it seems to me is to empower others. The only point of leadership is to inspire.

Decide whether you want to be liked or admired.

My commitment originated in my own story and my own relationship to violence.

The mechanism of violence is what destroys women, controls women, diminishes women and keeps women in their so-called place.

I would rate the fact that I get to be alive a big beautiful 10. Satisfaction with myself - work in progress.

I think all my work's been about how do women get back into our bodies; how do men get back. We're all disassociated.

...to speak of them out loud, to speak of their hunger and pain and loneliness and humour, to make them visible so that can not be ravaged in the dark without great consequence.

People are more afraid to love than they are to kill.

Theater has an incredible capacity to move people to social change, to address issues, to inspire social revolution.

Since cancer, I feel like I have dreams rather than ambitions, visions rather than plans.

Money doesn't make you special, it makes you lucky. Be generous, be crazy, be outrageous.

I began to see my body like an iPad or a car. I would drive it and demand things from it. It had no limits. It was invincible. It was to be conquered and mastered like the Earth herself.

Why are women immobile? Because so many feel like they’re waiting for someone to say, "You’re good, you’re pretty, I give you permission."

I want to touch you in real time not find you on YouTube, I want to walk next to you in the mountains not friend you on Facebook.

Real security is contemplating death, not pretending it doesn't exist.

Stop trying to fix your body. It was never broken.

I'm a nomad. I have a place in New York in the Flatiron District, and I have a place in Paris in Ile Saint-Louis, and I spend a lot of time in Congo.

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. (xxvi)

I am going to stop mainlining my life force / Into your self-esteem: / Air pump girl blowing up boy rubber ball / You can stay flat and go nowhere by yourself