Laura van den Berg Quotes

I do not regret the years I spent reading the traditional canon of white male writers in school. I do regret reading so little else there: Austen, George Eliot and occasionally Woolf, likewise Wright, Ellison, Hughes and Gwendolyn Brooks.

When I walk into a room that is all white and all male, I'm sitting on the outside of that club. That's sometimes an intimidating experience. But I think that everywhere that I've gotten is because I've worked hard. I have the experience, I have the credentials - I continue not to take any of that for granted.

The cavemen are still in charge at the networks. They're all white males, and you can't get away from that.

The only people I don't reach on a very personal level are straight white men. They don't really need another entertainer dedicated for them exclusively, so they're fine.

#TimesUp is you can't hold it in anymore: Time's up! The doors have to give way. It can't be that every 27-year-old born into a male body is a designated genius. It can't be that the language used to review male and female films is different.

Women are not making it to the top of any profession in the world. But when I say, 'The blunt truth is that men run the world,' people say, 'Really?' That, to me, is the problem.

I know, for me, that I have always been very conscious of how I dress when I go to the studio, I'm very conscious of my body language when I'm working - a lot of times, I'm the only female in the room. It's a very male-dominated profession. I'm always around guys. Guys are going to try you all day, and they're going to flirt all day.

With my early work I got eviscerated by my male professors, and so you learned to disguise your impulses, as many women have done. And that's definitely changed.

I teach a lot of graduate creative writing classes, and on the first day, I like to go around the room and ask everybody what's the last book you've read that you really loved. And all of the women tend to give me chick lit titles. And to me, that's sort of disappointing because it's their only exposure to fiction somehow.

I feel like, in a lot of shows where the woman is in charge, the woman is this ball buster and the guy is sort of weak and spineless. And that's never been my experience in a relationship. I think it's much more interesting that the guy is the boss. And there are stakes.

We throw at female artists this expectation that their work has to speak to the female experience. And if it doesn't, you're letting the side down. Throwing this stumbling block in the way of female artists is counterintuitive.

Theatre is an exclusive place that tends to be dominated by white men, or dying white men.

All of the philosophers I studied were white (with a few Eastern exceptions), and, for that matter, they were all male. Africa, the cradle of civilization, seemed to have no footing in the highest form of human thought.

I think that, by and large, the predominant voice we hear in rock music is a white male voice.

White middle- and upper-class men have a longer journey to go than many people.

It infuriates me that the work of white American writers can be universal and lay claim to classic texts, while black and female authors are ghetto-ized as 'other.'

It's understandable why TV hasn't been diverse because a lot of TV writers are white dudes from Harvard. And white dudes from Harvard aren't going to immediately want to write about trans issues. They're not immediately going to want to write about a Filipino family.

For a long time in the United States, in practice if not in principle, only white, male, Protestants were born free and equal.

… as long as men, even socialist men, even the best men in the world, make laws these will be to their advantage and to our disadvantage.

To be white and male is not to be sexist and racist.

I'm about as privileged as you can get. I'm a white, male, heterosexual front man of a rock band.

Why can't black women on stage tell stories that can affect white men in the audience?

Honestly, I don't think it's harder to be a producer as a woman. I think it helps me because I don't get bogged down in shows of male dominance that can sometimes get in the way of the best idea prevailing.

I'd never had a mentor in Hollywood. Men have always been in control of the business, and they usually mentor people who are like them - but two inches shorter.

I love how when I say the world is still run by men, and sometimes I say the world is still run by white men, people gasp as if that's news. That's not news. That's obvious.