Female Protagonist Quotes

“Don’t make assumptions, Detective Tobin. Don’t they teach you that in detective school?”
― Alyssa Hall, And Then I Heard the Quiet

“People can always say I don't look impressive enough, but they can't argue over how strong I am once I punch them in the face.”
― F.C. Yee, The Epic Crush of Genie Lo

“How dare a person tell a woman, how to dress, how to talk, how to behave! Any being who does that, is no human.”
― Abhijit Naskar, The Bengal Tigress: A Treatise on Gender Equality

“I fail to understand why men think violence will intimidate women. Women, who bleed all over themselves every month, who rub blood clots between their fingers and burst them like insects, and sometimes can't because they're not blood clots, they're tongue-coloured strings of meat from the womb. Women who burst open in childbirth, vagina splitting and anus sagging, tiny, hardening fingernails clawing inside of them, placentas like thick filet mignon.”
― Virginia Feito, Victorian Psycho

“When I grow up, maybe I will be
the first one to circle the sea.
Or maybe I will just spend all my day
doing everything my way.
Maybe I will be in a world of my own
I just hope not alone.
I just know that whatever I do
I will never, ever forget about you.”
― Oliver Neubert, Chantel's Quest for the Silver Leaf

“I mean, honestly? That's wife material. Like, three kids and a dog material. If she looked at me the way she looks at you, my IUD would have shot out like a party popper.”
― Casey McQuiston, One Last Stop

“This is what you get. To work in a nice place with a few interesting people, to have friends with whom to discuss life and ideas. To attend the theatre, to hear live music, to arrange the use of the studio room on Monday nights for the local philosophy reading group. Oh, Kierkegaard, that'll be interesting. To exercise once again, for a little time, who knows how long, the power to charm and fascinate, to be the object of an intense and searching desire. And to feel inside herself the reciprocating force of desire, this is what she gets, a life of her own.”
― Sally Rooney, Intermezzo

“Men often like to pretend their weaknesses don't exist, as if they are gods. But who would want to be a god? I would rather be a shag lion in a field, with no worry but my next meal, than to an all-knowing being with the weight of the sun and the stars on my shoulders.”
― Virginia Mary, Across the Great Ocean: Awakening

“Time had always happened to her. Not here. Here, she slid light across the sky—watched the world bend to her hand.”
― R.P. Gage, Noetic Gravity

“Sometimes the old-age serenity thing is crap.”
― Becky Masterman, We Were Killers Once

“A wonder came over her as she considered how much further she could grow.”
― Kalynn Applewhite, Awakening Anne

“Camus, I don’t want to keep playing this game of hide and seek knowing I’m going to lose. If I go down, I go down in flames. Fighting.”
― Alexandra Ding, A City Without Birds

“A blur? Hardly. She'd give anything for a blur.”
― Kat Elle, Epoch

“How strange, thought Blanca, that she should only realize how miserable she was when threatened with happiness.”
― Kat Elle, Epoch

“HEROES?” I laughed. “Look at the world! There’s nothing heroic about it… No, this world could burn, for all I care… and so could everyone in it.”
― iLana Markarov, The Timekeeper's Secret

“This just proves how far you and the others are willing to go to keep things hidden.”
― iLana Markarov, The Timekeeper's Secret

“I’m my own woman and my choices are my own — even if they are the wrong ones.”
― Gillie Basson, Undefeated: A Novel

“We are not built to be weapons, Kasara. But to build and renew, to lead with empathy and compassion, that is a woman’s job. Think of the other leaders, think of how their factions run on hate and greed. That is why I am here, that is why I took up the VO, because women are supposed to change the world. My father didn’t have only daughters as punishment from some distant god. No, he had daughters because some distant god knew what we could do.”
― Saralyn Everhart, Wishing for Corruption

“Rella was exhausted. She just wanted a life where she wouldn’t have to talk about it.”
― Nicole T. Smith, We Have Shadows Too

“It seemed impossible that I was supposed to keep loving - even revering - my body as it decomposed in slow motion. Why not give in and have low self-esteem? Maybe I could slay in that way instead.”
― Monica Heisey, Really Good, Actually

“A small bubble of self-esteem percolated up from my depths.”
― Jo Ann Beard, The Fourth State of Matter

“People always complain if the female character isn’t outgoing, outspoken, and feisty. She has to be strong, courageous, funny, and just…out there. If the character isn’t, then the book gets blasted...Well, I’ve thought about this a lot, and it makes me think people believe there’s something wrong with being quiet, introverted, and shy. Like, those are personality flaws, and people in real life who have them aren’t good enough to have characters based on them. Or people like me aren’t good enough.”
― J.M. Brister, The Town Liar

“Bickford is a legend from the world of espionage. A five star read.”
― James Adams, The Next World War: Computers Are the Weapons & the Front Line Is Everywhere

“Strap yourself in for one hell of a ride.”
― Bear Grylls, A Survival Guide For Life

“The protagonist of Grey Eminence was Amália, the world's first climate change artist* and the first person to exceed a billion followers on Instagram, making her a sort of global empress, unprecedented in the history of Earth. She was also Portugal's foremost performer of fado, a gold medalist in rhythmic gymnastics, excellent at baking, and capable of taming the aurochs she summoned back from extinction to revivify Lascaux.

*What the author means here is that Amália was the first to view climate change itself as an art. Her oeuvre was above all a radical reinterpretation of the still life. She practiced extinction as well as large-scale action sculptures that undid or outmaneuvered natural processes such as decomposition and promoted catastrophes when opportunities--- weather-related or other--- arose.”
― Jennifer Croft, The Extinction of Irena Rey

“She was filled with a sense of expectancy — as if at any moment something very wonderful could happen.”
― Jacqueline Susann, Valley of the Dolls

“I like punching someone in the face. It’s a useful release from everything else. All my life, it seems, all I’ve known is fighting”
― Gillie Basson, Undefeated: A Novel

“She was made of magic and wrath”
― Olivia O'Flynn, Ever Blessed

“She was made of magic and wrath.”
― Olivia O'Flynn, Ever Blessed

“In the silence between two heartbeats, William felt it — the pull of a war older than stars, a calling etched in the bones of fate.”
― H . Nightshade