Caitlin Moran quotes:

Feminism means something - legislation, cultural change - but 'Girl Power' meant nothing more than being friends with your friends.

One of the great things about being a writer/journalist is that my boss loves me to go out and do features on being someone else. I did a feature on Kate Middleton, where I went to an incredible fancy state home in the countryside, put on a wedding dress and posed for engagement pictures with a fake Prince William.

I'm quite British; I've got big, flat feet, and I can't wear heels. I've got very, very pale Celtic skin, so my legs are always a frightening blue color. So when you take out clothes that reveal your legs, shoes that have any kind of heel, no shop will actually take my money.

I don't regret not going to college. Students learn up to the age of 21, then stop. I'll always be learning - the things that really matter in life. How to sign on, how to get free food, how to be streetwise.

I'm so glad I spent 10 years being sad and lonely.

I can't think of anything I hate more than a former punk - they are the most self-righteous people in the world.

I love puffins. They are small, round gothic birds, and their babies are called pufflings.

In the U.K., we have a paper called 'The Daily Mail,' which is quite misogynist. And every day, it just writes pieces about: 'Women, you're going to die now! Women, here's shoes that give you cancer! Women, just hate yourselves!'

The first thing to improve society is not banning abortion, but making sure that everyone who had a child is in the best position to be able to rear it.

What is feminism? Simply the belief that women should be as free as men, however nuts, dim, deluded, badly dressed, fat, receding, lazy, and smug they might be.

I see feminism as a massive party. It's cool, the idea that 50% of the population can now start doing things and having fun and experimenting with their hair and makeup.

It used to be if you wanted something nice to wear, you would sew it yourself for your body type. Women before the 20th century didn't have this problem. Now, it seems we're all squeezed into random designs. They're designed for no one.

I know people go on about Twitter, but it is amazing. It's whatever you want it to be, and all the women got in there before the boys.

I remember, around age three, peas growing in the back garden. Pinching them from their pods and popping them in the mouth was my first realisation that food came from somewhere other than a shelf.

I wrote my first book at eight, all of four pages. At 10, I did a 40-page story. At 12, I wrote two stage plays.

The idea of not being able to control my own fertility genuinely terrifies me. That one mistake might change your life. That everything I am, and do, could be ended by the repeal of laws our mothers fought so hard for, that women had waited for the entire span of humanity to come about.

Once you become poor, tired and time-constrained, you become a much better human being.

If you read all your history books, there are no women in them.

I've generally got low levels of embarrassment.

When I learned that flour pound for pound has as many calories as sugar, and that when eating pasta you're basically eating cake, I was size 23, and my neck was restricting my breathing, and so I got on a microbiotic diet and got myself an exercise bike.

I never wanted to be famous. It was amusing at first, but now I hate it. I just wanted to be respected by people I respect. And I wanted to be rich. It's best to get rich, then you can do what you want.

I can't live in a world where there are only, like, four kinds of women. Or where every woman is obsessed with cake. The very least I ask is that we have one female character in the world who likes savory things! I don't have any role models who like cheese!

I loved Riot Grrl. Not only was it a punk rock revolution, but it meant you could get dressed for a night out for less than two pounds!

A majority of women's magazines feature women who do amazing things, but then the article focuses on how she ruined it with her shoes.

I don't think that women being seen as inferior is a prejudice based on male hatred of women. When you look at history, it's a prejudice based on simple fact.

If you can find a frock you look nice in and can run up three flights of stairs, you're not fat.

If you're not a confident person, pretend to be one.

I don't campaign for the end of the aristocracy or the upper classes; I don't really want to destroy anything at all. I just want more plurality.

Our world is afflicted by poverty. Don't spend all this money on clothes!

The revolution doesn't always look perfect.

I just want Tina Fey to be my best friend. And Lena Dunham. And Oprah, too.

My core belief is that if you're complaining about something for more than three minutes, two minutes ago you should have done something about it.

Most women I know love the idea of fashion, but the practicalities that go with it are just distressing.

When my children say, 'In the future, Mummy, will things get better or worse for humanity?' I say: 'Who knows, since Amy Winehouse died. It's all in the air now. Eat your broccoli.'

Parents drinking is the reason you came into the world, and if we didn't keep doing it then, by God, it would be the reason you went back out of it.

Any action a woman engages in from a spirit of joy, and within a similarly safe and joyous environment, falls within the city-walls of feminism. A girl has a right to dance how she wants, when her favourite record comes on.

If I don't keep this job, then my only future career-options are working in Argos, or being a prostitute,' I say, wildly.'Maybe you could work in Argos as a prostitute,' my mother says, merrily. She appears to be enjoying this conversation. 'They could list you in the catalogue, and people could queue up, and wait for you to come down the conveyor belt.

I don't campaign for the end of the aristocracy or the upper classes; I don't really want to destroy anything at all. I just want more plurality."

A library in the middle of a community is a cross between an emergency exit, a life-raft and a festival. They are cathedrals of the mind; hospitals of the soul; theme parks of the imagination. On a cold rainy island, they are the only sheltered public spaces where you are not a consumer, but a citizen instead"

It's always sunny above the clouds. Always. Every day on earth - every day I have ever had - was secretly sunny, after all.

Who doesn't have a friend who worships her lover with a passion that seems baffling to everyone that knows them? Before you met him for the first time, she'd talked him up like he was a cross between Indiana Jones, Barack Obama and The Doctor. When you finally meet him, he's a quiet little thing who looks like a baked bean in glasses, and actually says 'harumph' as spelt.

When I talk to girls, they go, 'I'm not a feminist.' And I say: 'What? You don't want to vote? Do you want to be owned by your husband? Do you want your money from your job to go into his bank account? If you were raped, do you still want that to be a crime? Congratulations : you are a feminist.'

Why on earth have I, because I'm a woman, got to be nice to everyone?

We must recall the most important of humanity guidelines: Be polite. Being polite is possibly the greatest daily contribution everyone can make to life on Earth.

I told my girls, 'Look at Rihanna: She's one of the biggest pop stars in the world. She's really famous, really powerful, really rich. Yet in every single video she can only wear panties. Poor Rhianna! We'll know when she is properly powerful and successful when we see her in a lovely cardigan.'

But nearly every woman I know has a roughly similar story - in fact, dozens of them: stories about being obsessed with a celebrity, work colleague or someone they vaguely knew for years; living in a parallel world in their head; conjuring up endless plots and scenarios for this thing that never actually happened.

I am fully aware of what the word 'fat' means ... It's a swear word. It's a weapon. It's a sociological subspecies. It's an accusation, dismissal, and rejection.

The problem that we have is thinking there's only one kind of feminist, and that she's politically correct and right on at all times, wears flat shoes, doesn't wear makeup, probably doesn't have sex, is very angry, wears dungarees, is a vegetarian.

I want a Zero Tolerance policy on All The Patriarchal Bullshit.

It was the Spice Girls who messed it all up. And obviously, the appropriating of the phrase "girl power", which at that point overrode any notion of feminism, and which was a phrase that meant absolutely nothing apart from being friends with your girlfriends.

I wish I could give up smoking, but it does taste so delicious.

Nowadays, to be frank, every week is a good week for freakshow television. we might start asking, Why are there so many freaks? And why do they all want to be on television?

What is feminism? Simply the belief that women should be as free as men, however nuts, dim, deluded, badly dressed, fat, receding, lazy and smug they might be. Are you a feminist? Hahaha. Of course you are.

...there is the sheer emotional, intellectual, physical, chemical pleasure of your children. The honest truth is that the world holds no greater gratification than lying in bed with your children, putting your leg on top of them in a semi-crushing manner, while saying sternly, "You are a poo.

I feel in my bones that Lady Gaga is a true strident feminist and good for my soul - but how do I square this with the fact that she's constantly walking around in her bra and pants, even at, like, airports and stuff, where even nudists wear a fleece and linen drawstring trousers?

You can always tell when a woman is with the wrong man, because she has so much to say about the fact that nothing's happening. When women find the right person, on the other hand, they just... disappear for six months, then resurface, eyes shiny, and usually about six pounds heavier.

At 14, I am an experiment. Inside, I am resurrected. I am in the middle of the kind of explosion of perspective that, in later years, I will pay a great deal of money to emulate in nightclubs, and at parties, in bathrooms--counting out tenners for pills in order to feel a tenth this remorseless, expanded, and inspired.

When young people are cynical, and snarky, they shoot down their own future. When you keep saying "No," all that's left is what other people said "Yes" to before you were born. Really, "No" is no choice at all.

Flyaway, problem hair is the enemy of feminism, and was probably invented by the Man to crush Susan Sontag.

You can crush any woman by suggesting that she's fat, not even saying the word 'fat' but just suggesting she's fat.

The doughy-faced woman has been forced to sit on the sidelines of culture for too long, and it's now time for us to stand up with our big round faces like the moon and say we have things to say, too. We have a round-faced agenda we want to push.

hearing women singing about themselves - rather than men singing about women - makes everything seem wonderfully clear, and possible

Men have made the world. And they've made a brilliant job of it. I love men. You know, men, you built Paris and you invented The Beatles, and, you know, and you've taught dogs to say 'sausages.' You know, I love your world. Thank you for it.

Because I haven't yet learned the simplest and most important thing of all: the world is difficult, and we are all breakable. So just be kind.

When you talk to a young teenage girl, they're just full of self-loathing. The reason they feel self-loathing is they don't feel normal. It is a world that has not been built for them. It's been built for men, and that's why they feel bad.

It's the silliness--the profligacy, and the silliness--that's so dizzying: a seven-year-old will run downstairs, kiss you hard, and then run back upstairs again, all in less than 30 seconds. It's as urgent an item on their daily agenda as eating or singing. It's like being mugged by Cupid.

For me, and I suspect a lot of socially awkward people, dealing with people face-to-face seems really traumatic. Particularly if you have massive sweating issues, and particularly if on top of that you have quite smelly sweat that smells like onion soup.

People get really scared when women reclaim words, talk about themselves honestly and also make jokes because it's a really unstoppable combination.

A library in the middle of a community is a cross between an emergency exit, a life-raft and a festival. They are cathedrals of the mind; hospitals of the soul; theme parks of the imagination. On a cold rainy island, they are the only sheltered public spaces where you are not a consumer, but a citizen instead

When you live in a small house with five younger siblings, it's actually far more sensible- and much quicker- to cry alone.

Over-eating is the addiction choice of carers, and that's why it's come to be regarded as the lowest-ranking of all the addictions.

In the early '90s, it was grunge; everybody was fully clothed. Alanis Morissette was one of the biggest artists in the world, never wore makeup, wearing Doc Marten boots, and then the Spice Girls turn up, and suddenly it all looks a bit burlesque; suddenly they're the biggest band in the world.

I can honestly say that my abortion was one of the least difficult decisions of my life. I'm not being flippant when I say it took me longer to decide what worktops to have in the kitchen than whether I was prepared to spend the rest of my life being responsible for a further human being.

Every woman who chooses - joyfully, thoughtfully, calmly, of their own free will and desire - not to have a child does womankind a massive favour in the long term.

I once went into a meeting, and every woman put her a million-pound bag on the table. Then I'm there with my tote bag and anorak. And I'm like, well, I'm still the most important person in the room right now.

I am not good at small talk. I will hide in a cupboard to avoid chitty-chat.

I do not... look very feminine. Diana, Princess of Wales is feminine... I am... femi-none.

The thing is, one in three women in the Western world will end up having an abortion, but they never talk about it. When you keep silent about that stuff, it is because you are embarrassed by the societal distaste of the topic.

If every woman who's had an abortion took tomorrow off in protest, America would grind to a halt. And that would be symbolic: because women grind to a halt if they are not in control of their fertility.

I hate that tabloid idea of anybody who is famous having to forfeit their privacy.

Simultaneously, my two biggest heroes are Susan Sontag and Morticia Addams from 'The Addams Family.'

When I saw 'Pretty In Pink' at the cinema at the age of 11, I just thought it was a period piece from maybe 100 years previously. I had no idea that was what everybody was supposed to be wearing.

Telly never has any smart, amusing intellectuals living on a council estate.

My parents were hippies. I'm the eldest of eight children.

Watching 'Girls' has just given me renewed courage.

You can be socially accepted and tell the truth about what it is to be a woman.

The word 'spinster' tells you everything you need to know about our attitude of women who choose not to marry.

If you are lying down to give birth, gravity is not helping you. You know, you stand up and, you know, a baby will basically kind of fall out of you, if you keep walking 'round.

If anyone was going to write a song or, you know, or a book, or make a film about a girl like me, it was going to have to be a girl like me, and quite literally, me.

I like a little bit of revolution. I think it's a very good hobby for a young woman. Better than squash.

I was brought up in the '80s. I was born in 1975. So by the time I got to 10 and I kind of knew that I probably was going to have to be a grown-up lady at some point, the feminine role models that I had were kind of the cast of "Dynasty" and "Dallas." And I just found that terrifying.

You just wanted to be normal. It wasn't even being beautiful. I just wanted to be smooth and thin and have, and you know, have beautiful glossy hair and lovely clothes and be able to walk in heels. And I thought that once I did all of that stuff that my life would begin.

But deciding not to have children is a very, very hard decision for a woman to make: the atmosphere is worryingly inconducive to saying, "I choose not to," or "it all sounds a bit vile, tbh." We call these women "selfish" The inference of the word "childless" is negative: one of lack, and loss. We think of nonmothers as rangy lone wolves--rattling around, as dangerous as teenage boys or men. We make women feel that their narrative has ground to a halt in their thirities if they don't "finish things" properly and have children.

It's just a horrible thing to keep saying to a woman, do you want a baby inside you? I mean, it's creepy.

I was spurred by the fact that having worked for women's magazines myself as a journalist, if you go off and interview a female celebrity, I'd just go in and interview them like I'd interview any human being and talk about the things that interested me. And you'd come back, and you'd file your copy. And then my editor would read through my copy and go, why haven't you asked them if they want kids? And I'd be like, well, I don't know, I interviewed Aerosmith last week. And I didn't ask them that.

And every book, you find, has its own social group--friends of its own it wants to introduce you to, like a party in the library that need never, ever end.

The world is difficult and we are all breakable. So just be kind.

The word spinster tells you everything that you need to know about our attitude of women who choose not to marry, yes.

When you say you're not a feminist, if feminism hadn't existed, and you didn't live in a feminist world, you wouldn't be saying that, because you'd be too busy scrubbing out the toilets in back while cooking up your husband's tea and dying in childbirth at the age of 34.

For throughout history, you can read the stories of women who - against all the odds - got being a woman right, but ended up being compromised, unhappy, hobbled or ruined, because all around them, society was still wrong. Show a girl a pioneering hero - Sylvia Plath, Dorothy Parker, Frida Kahlo, Cleopatra, Boudicca, Joan of Arc - and you also, more often than not, show a girl a woman who was eventually crushed.

Iâ??m neither â??pro-womenâ?? nor â??anti-menâ??. Iâ??m just â??Thumbs up for the six billion

If you do it properly, life is art, really.

I read something once that when you're online, your inhibitions are lowered to the state where you've had three drinks. Once you basically know that the entire internet is slightly drunk, it all makes a lot more sense, and you deport yourself accordingly.

I have a rule for working out if the root problem of something is, in fact, sexism. And it is this: asking 'Are the boys doing it? Are the boys having to worry about this stuff? Are the boys the centre of a gigantic global debate on this subject?

To say that you have to carry to term and look after a child for the rest of your life is to say I force you, legally, to love someone. It's like saying, you know, you have to go and love another - you have to go - you know, you have to go marry someone. It's like an arranged marriage.

A library in the middle of a community is a cross between an emergency exit, a life raft and a festival.

If you eat enough books, you start pooping out words.

Just proportionately, statistically, one in three women are going to have an abortion. They're not all going to feel guilty.

Whenever I see a taboo, I just think that's something we need to drag screaming out into the light and discuss. Because taboos are where our fears live, and taboos are the things that keep us tiny. Particularly for women.

In my family, my fat family, none of us ever say the word 'fat.' 'Fat' is the word you hear shouted on the playground or in the street - it's never allowed over the threshold of the house. My mum won't have that filth in her house. At home together, we are safe. ... There will be no harm to our feelings here because we never acknowledge fat exists. We never refer to our size. We are the elephants in the room.

The sort of the template of being a mother is that you're endlessly giving to the point of exhaustion. You know, that's amazing if you can do that, but for that to be seen as the norm of motherhood, that women are always supposed to give until they're exhausted, you know, to always take on all these burdens - and it's why I'm so, you know, in favor of protecting all of the abortion legislation we've got, to give women the right to go, I can't do that. I can't do it. I'm too tired.

When Rudy Giuliani became mayor of New York in 1993, his belief in the 'Broken Windows' theory led him to implement the 'Zero Tolerance' crime policy. Crime dropped dramatically, significantly, and continued to for the next ten years. Personally, I feel the time has come for women to introduce their own Zero Tolerance policy on the Broken Windows issues in our lives - I want a Zero Tolerance policy on 'All The Patriarchal Bullshit'.

I always give three pieces of advice to all the teenage girls when I do my talks: long country walks - it's important to get some fresh air in your lungs, and be in contact with your body; masturbation - it takes the edge off, it'll get you through; and the revolution - believing in changing the world.

I think it's a really important thing for women to be able to just put their hands up and go, I can't actually do any more.

Batman doesnâ??t want a baby in order to feel heâ??s â??done everythingâ??. Heâ??s just saved Gotham again! If this means that Batman must be a feminist role model above, say, Nicola Horlick, then so be it.

When you've got a mother who's given birth to eight children, you know, often without any kind of medical intervention - just she gave birth to one of my brothers sort of on the bedroom floor in front of all of us -you know, you see that women are fairly capable.

But as the years went on, I realised that what I really want to be, all told, is a human. Just a productive, honest, courteously treated human.

The kind of classic pose of a female model is to look kind of sexy and a bit annoyed.