Nawal El-Saadawi Quotes

I have triumphed over both life and death because I no longer desire to live, nor do I any longer fear to die.

~ Nawal El-Saadawi

Who said to kill does not require gentleness?

~ Nawal El-Saadawi

How is it possible to live? Life is so hard?’‘You must be harder than life, Firdaus. Life is very hard. The only people who really live are those who are harder than life itself.’‘But you are not hard, Sharifa, so how do you manage to live?’‘I am hard, terribly hard, Firdaus.’‘No, you are gentle and soft.’‘My skin is soft, but my heart is cruel, and my bite deadly.’‘Like snake?’‘Yes, exactly like a snake. Life is a snake. They are the same, Firdaus. If the snake realises you are not a snake, it will bite you. And if life knows you have no sting, it will devour you.

~ Nawal El-Saadawi

How is it possible to live? Life is so hard?’‘You must be harder than life, Firdaus. Life is very hard. The only people who really live are those who are harder than life itself.’‘But you are not hard, Sharifa, so how do you manage to live?’‘I am hard, terribly hard, Firdaus.’‘No, you are gentle and soft.’‘My skin is soft, but my heart is cruel, and my bite deadly.’‘Like a snake?’‘Yes, exactly like a snake. Life is a snake. They are the same, Firdaus. If the snake realises you are not a snake, it will bite you. And if life knows you have no sting, it will devour you.

~ Nawal El-Saadawi

I discovered that all these rulers were men. What they had in common was an avaricious and distorted personality, a never-ending appetite for money, sex and unlimited power. They were men who sowed corruption on the earth, and plundered their peoples, men endowed with loud voices, a capacity for persuasion, for choosing sweet words and shooting poisoned arrows. Thus, the truth about them was revealed only after their death, and as a result I discovered that history tended to repeat itself with a foolish obstinacy.

~ Nawal El-Saadawi

To be creative means to connect. It's to abolish the gap between the body, the mind and the soul, between science and art, between fiction and nonfiction.

~ Nawal El-Saadawi

Whenever I go to New York or any European country, they say: 'Nawal, why don't you get a facelift?' I tell them, 'I am proud of my wrinkles. Every wrinkle on my face tells the story of my life. Why should I hide my age?'

~ Nawal El-Saadawi

I am becoming more radical with age. I have noticed that writers, when they are old, become milder. But for me it is the opposite. Age makes me more angry.

~ Nawal El-Saadawi

I've participated in many demonstrations since I was a child. When I was at medical college, I was fighting King Farouk, then British colonization, against Nasser, against Sadat who pushed me into prison, Mubarak who pushed me into exile. I never stopped.

~ Nawal El-Saadawi

You know, I look to myself mainly as a creative writer all my life and a medical doctor.

~ Nawal El-Saadawi

War criminals in the U.S. and Israel are not punished: no international court has the courage to put them on trial.

~ Nawal El-Saadawi

To me, 'beauty' means to be natural, creative, honest - to say the truth.

~ Nawal El-Saadawi

Home is where you are appreciated, safe and protected, creative, and where you are loved - not where you are put in prison.

~ Nawal El-Saadawi

Women in most countries have not achieved much, because they can't be liberated under the patriarchal, capitalist, imperialist and military system that determines the way we live now, and which is governed by power, not justice, by false democracy, not real freedom.

~ Nawal El-Saadawi