"I never met a man who wasn't stupider than me."

--Andrea Dworkin
From Mercy

"Does the sun ask itself, "Am I good? Am I worthwhile? Is there enough of me?" No, it burns and it shines. Does the sun ask itself, "What does the moon think of me? How does Mars feel about me today?" No it burns, it shines. Does the sun ask itself, "Am I as big as other suns in other galaxies?" No, it burns, it shines."

--Andrea Dworkin
From Our Blood

"Writing requires an almost perfect concentration which I am trying to learn and there is no way to learn it that is spelled out anywhere so I can understand it but I have a sense that it's completely simple, on the order of being able to sit still and keep your mind dead center in you without apology or fear. I squirm after some time but it ain't boredom, it's fear of what's possible, how much you can know if you can be quiet enough and simple enough. I get frightened seeing what's in my own mind if words get put to it. There's a light there, it's bright, it's wide, it could make you blind if you look direct into it and so I turn away, afraid."

--Andrea Dworkin
From Mercy

"I am an enemy of nationalism and male domination. This means that I repudiate all nationalism except my own and reject the dominance of all men except those I love. In this I am like every other woman, a pretender to rebellion because to break with patriarchy I would need to betray my own."

--Andrea Dworkin
From Scapegoat: The Jews Israel, and Women's Liberation

"But I think I had a different point of view than anything I encountered. I believed that I had a contribution to make and I didn't know if it would matter very much. I didn't have any idea of the consequences. But I knew something was missing in the women's movement and I knew that I had at least some kind of clue as to what it was."

--Andrea Dworkin
From Feminist Foremothers in Women's Studies Psychology and Mental Health (1995)

"I don't think commitment [to feminism] means you are accountable in your private life to the women's movement. I think it does mean a recognition that what happens to you in private doesn't just happen to you, that it happens probably to vast numbers of women, that it happens to you because you're a woman, and that what feminism requires from every individual involved is a commitment to be willing to ask the painful questions. I don't think it means adherence to a set of answers.

--Andrea Dworkin
From Current Biography Yearbook (1994)