Eve Ensler quotes

Eve Ensler is an American playwright, performer, and activist, best known for writing "The Vagina Monologues." Her works have sparked global conversations around women’s rights and gender-based violence. She continues to inspire activism and social change through her art and advocacy. Here are 93 of her quotes:

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... (Eve Ensler)
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. View quote
Eve Ensler
Well, the tyranny of masculinity and the tyranny of patriarchy I think has been much more deadly to men than it has to women. It hasn't killed our hearts. It's killed men's hearts. It's silenced them, it's cut them off. View quote
Eve Ensler
When you rape, beat, maim, mutilate, burn, bury, and terrorize women, you destroy the essential life energy on the planet. View quote
Eve Ensler
In the United States, the last recorded clitoridectomy for curing masturbation was performed in 1948--on a five year old girl. View quote
Eve Ensler
Go so far away that you stop being afraid of not coming back. View quote
Eve Ensler
When you bring consciousness to anything, things begin to shift. View quote
Eve Ensler
stop fixing your bodies and start fixing the world! View quote
Eve Ensler
...find freedom, aliveness, and power not from what contains, locates, or protects us, but from what dissolves, reveals, and expands us. View quote
Eve Ensler
The clitoris is pure in purpose. It is the only organ in the body designed purely for pleasure. View quote
Eve Ensler
Danger lurks when people are dissociated and detached from their own story or feelings. (Eve Ensler)
Security isn't what I hunger for. I hunger for change. I hunger for connection. View quote
Eve Ensler
...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. View quote
Eve Ensler
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) View quote
Eve Ensler
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. View quote
Eve Ensler
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. View quote
Eve Ensler
One of the most radical things women can do is to love their body. View quote
Eve Ensler
I think when people begin to tell their stories, everything changes, because not only are you legitimized in the telling of your story and are you found, literally, like you matter, you exist in the telling of your story, but when you hear your story be told, you suddenly exist in community and with others. View quote
Eve Ensler
You know I think so many of us live outside our bodies. My dream is that people will find a way back home, into their bodies, to connect with the earth, to connect with each other, to connect with the poor, to connect with the broken, to connect with the needy, to connect with people calling out all around us, to connect with the beauty, poetry, the wildness. View quote
Eve Ensler
When we give in the world what we want the most, we heal the broken part inside each of us. View quote
Eve Ensler
You have to give to the world the thing that you want the most, in order to fix the broken parts inside you. (Eve Ensler)
Unless men are active allies, we'll never end violence against women and girls. View quote
Eve Ensler
Dance is holy, sexual, and it's a way of being very powerful and a little dangerous without being violent. View quote
Eve Ensler
People are sad. People are broke. People are worried about money, people are worried that they're not enough and not amounting to anything and they don't feel good about themselves. People have rough times, and everybody's pretending it's not true, and we need to break that veneer. View quote
Eve Ensler
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. View quote
Eve Ensler

Eve Ensler

Eve Ensler - Image
Photo: Justin Hoch photographing for Hudson Union Society, CC BY 2.0
Occupation: American Playwright
Born: May 25, 1953
Quotes count: 93

Related authors

Dylan McDermott - thumbnail
Dylan McDermott  28 
American Actor
Gloria Steinem - thumbnail
Gloria Steinem  170 
American Activist
Mark Rylance - thumbnail
Mark Rylance  12 
English Actor
Jane Fonda - thumbnail
Jane Fonda  90 
American Actress
Diane Paulus  19 
American Director
James Lecesne - thumbnail
James Lecesne  6 
American Actor
Rosario Dawson - thumbnail
Rosario Dawson  17 
American Actress
Glenn Close - thumbnail
Glenn Close  35 
American Actress
Sara Bareilles - thumbnail
Sara Bareilles  42 
American Musician
Kimberle Williams Crenshaw - thumbnail
Kimberle Williams Crenshaw  1 
American Activist