Nawal El Saadawi Quotes

There is a proverb that says, ‘Talk so that I may know who you are.’ But I say, ‘Show me your eyes and I will know who you are.

My skin is soft, but my heart is cruel, and my bite is deadly.

First of all, I hated the medical profession. Medical education in Egypt was taken from the British, French, colonial educational system. And it’s very, very lacking – there is no sexology. I never read the word clitoris in any medical book when I was educated.

Solidarity between women can be a powerful force of change, and can influence future development in ways favourable not only to women but also to men.

During the ’80s I wrote Memoirs from the Women’s Prison. This is one of my most important books. It came out in Arabic in ’83. About my experience in prison.

I practiced medicine up ’til now. I practice psychiatry. I shifted from different specialties. I started as a village doctor – community doctor, public health preventive medicine.

Women are half the society. You cannot have a revolution without women. You cannot have democracy without women. You cannot have equality without women. You can’t have anything without women.

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

The parts in which I elaborated on the sexual life of the doctor herself, the personal life, her relation with men [in Memoirs of a Woman Doctor]. All this. They left only some very, very minute parts. And also the political, the political element in it. So in a way, they cut pieces that to my mind were very important.

We here in Egypt are fed up with U.S. colonialism.

First of all, all writing includes some part of the self. The relationship of the self and the other exists in writing, whether autobiographical or novel. There is a self and an other.

I’ve lived in Egypt among Christians and Muslims, and we never had a conflict. Now you have a conflict between Christians and Muslims and Baha’is and Sunni and Shia.