Eve Ensler Quotes
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Dance has a transformative effect on bodily trauma.
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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.
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I feel passionate about nurses. I would do anything for nurses. Anything.
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Anorexia was my attempt to have control over my body and manipulate my body and starve my body and shape my body. It was not a very good relationship. It was the sort of relationship my father had to my body. It was a tyrannical, "you'll do what I tell you" relationship.
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Danger lurks when people are dissociated and detached from their own story or feelings.
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Once you are diagnosed with cancer, time changes. It both speeds up insanely and stops altogether.
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Naming things, breaking through taboos and denial is the most dangerous, terrifying, and crucial work. This has to happen in spite of political climates or coercions, in spite of careers being won or lost, in spite of the fear of being criticized, outcast, or disliked. I believe freedom begins with naming things. Humanity is preserved by it.
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We have to know people who are outside of our own circle, we have to reach out to people we don't know, we have to protect people who are in tremendous danger. And we also have to not get burned out and let our fear and anxiety and depression sink us. So there's lots of things we have to do right now!
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I really do think how we frame things determines so much of our experience, and I've been talking to a lot of oncologists, like, why don't we call them transformation suites and give people transformation juice and have guides that support people when they're going through chemo so you could actually burn away what needs to be burned away, as opposed to this dread, terror, horror, which is a very different experience.
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People are more afraid to love than they are to kill.
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I think so much of my early life, even though I grew up White and middle class, I was completely shattered by the horrifically violent atmosphere I grew up in. I am a consequence of violence. That opened a door to many realities that I would not have experienced had I not survived what I did.
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Dancing insists we take up space, and though it has no set direction, we go there together. Dance is dangerous, joyous, sexual, holy, disruptive, and contagious and it breaks the rules. It can happen anywhere, at anytime, with anyone and everyone, and it's free. Dance joins us and pushes us to go further and that is why it's at the center of ONE BILLION RISING.
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Then there was sex, which, for me, was such a need. When I was younger, I had a need to have sex with everyone. I don't know where that was coming from, but there was such a need to connect physically - obviously, for me to connect physically to myself. There were times, like I say in the book, where you lay on top of me, when you push me down, when you're inside me.
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Go so far away that you stop being afraid of not coming back.
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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.
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What we all have to know is the struggle is long. It's long. It may not end in our lifetimes. But the struggle is what gives our lives meaning and purpose. I tell people to take time out of activism every day to take care of their bodies, to take care of their souls and spirits.
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An activist is someone who cannot help but fight for something. That person is not usually motivated by a need for power or money or fame, but in fact is driven slightly mad by some injustice, some cruelty, some unfairness, so much so that he or she is compelled by some internal moral engine to act to make it better.
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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.
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Why don't we bring everyone up to be caring and compassionate, to believe that we are connected with everyone and everything around us?
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What neo-capitalism does so brilliantly is that it's always subdividing and dividing, so that people are never able to be joined in their numbers and strength in a unified way. That is exactly what we have to overcome.
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I think there are so many children being brought up in some form of violence, be it violence of poverty or sexism or racism or homophobia or transphobia. That violence takes a life to transform or overcome. I don't think people should be spending their lives dealing with that. I think people should be thriving, playing, creating, evolving.