Marie Lu Quotes

Books written by boys are given very different treatment to those written by girls: they're even given very different covers. People also expect, in this YA-booming world, girls to be less experimental than boys: girls are achieving a lot of success, but they're confined.

When you write, you are not either sex. But when you're read you are definitely gendered.

No one knows 'men' as such, any more than anyone knows 'women,' and if they do generalise they're probably trying to hide their own ignorance. You might know one 'man,' yes, or even lots of individual 'men'.

Especially with girls, people always want to put them in little brackets.

Ah, well, do I wish that we lived in a world where gender didn't figure so prominently? Of course. Do I even think about myself as a woman when I go to make art? Of course not.

I didn't read much SF as a kid - I was a total Tolkien geek - but I started reading Samuel Delany and Angela Carter and Ursula LeGuin in high school, and I was definitely taken with the notion that here was a literature that could explore various notions of gender identity and how it affects the culture at large.

What I do know is that traditional gender roles are very real and flipping the norm is difficult for even the strongest, funniest, smartest men.

Why does 'writer' have no gender, but 'actor' has a gender? What is that?

Almost all the ideas we have about being a man or being a woman are so burdened with pain, anxiety, fear and self-doubt. For many of us, the confusion around this question is excruciating.

Clearly, we are not programmed at birth to behave a certain way based on our gender. Instead, we are trained throughout our lives to conform to our gender norms.

I can't write - I can't think like a woman... it's not natural, but I've tried.

I guess people have this image of women being more compassionate, being the mother, being caring, but I don't know if that's true. I think it's an image we've all carried over the years. I never want to attribute certain qualities to gender.

There are certain expectations placed on writers if other people have put a value on their gender. I'm aware of the hundreds of tiny differences that happen when people are seeing your gender before they see something else.

We're really taught to be followers from a very young age - men lead and women follow.

It's not at all a far jump to think that overall perceptions of gender - and what is and is not important in gender roles - would carry over from life to fiction.

People try to make women a very specific thing so that we like them.

The majority of the film industry is, like, obsessed with a ridiculous gender binary and keeping with this stupid social binary. Like, who cares?

History suggests that opposite gender debates, unfortunately, are accompanied by a host of expectations. Each candidate must tread carefully or risk running afoul of the gender stereotype they are subconsciously expected to conform to.

What I'm trying to do in all senses is deconstruct our idea of gender and use the privileges that come with looking like a model to bring attention to that.

When gender comes down upon us, male or female, it comes as a restriction.

The way the world sees women vs. men is a subject that really interests me.

Intellect is not sexed;... strength of mind is not sexed; and ... our views about the duties of men and the duties of women, the sphere of man and the sphere of woman, are mere arbitrary opinions, differing in different ages and countries, and dependent solely on the will and judgment of erring mortals.

If we keep on talking about masculine and feminine and following those stereotypes, then we will make women suppress and despise their so called masculine qualities and men suppress and despise their so called feminine ones, and that's where all the trouble starts.

I don't want to play sex roles any more. I'm tired of being known as the girl with the shape.

Because if you say men and women are the same and if male behaviour is the norm, and women are always expected to act like men, we will never be as good at being men as men are.