Claude Cahun is a fascinating artist - one of the few women to be part of the surrealist movement, she and her partner Suzanne Malherbe took on men's names and made artworks that investigated female identity long before 'The Second Sex' or Cindy Sherman.

Naomi Alderman

Categorized in : Partner Long Men Women

When we learn to TOLERATE boredom, we find out who we really are.

Naomi Alderman

tolerate boredom

What is freedom, in the end, but that no one cares any longer to try to restrain us?

Naomi Alderman

no-one-cares care trying

Our body is there right now. You did not have to earn a thing. It is a gift. You are a hero every time you step out of your front door to do some exercise.

Naomi Alderman

hero exercise doors

The gaming world isn't filled only with violence and depravity. In fact, it's mostly enchanting.

Naomi Alderman

only gaming violence world

As a gamer, I can't think of anything more annoying for everyone concerned than playing games in a shared living room.

Naomi Alderman

everyone think living gamer

More choice doesn't make us happy, and we understand that no one has infinite choices about how to live life.

Naomi Alderman

understand live-life happy life

When a marriage founders, this may well be cause for tremendous sadness, but it's not a failure of spirit or character. People change, their goals and dreams alter, their ideas of themselves grow, or they just meet someone they like better.

Naomi Alderman

dreams failure marriage change

The species will continue, whatever apocalypse we manage to unleash. It just won't be much fun to live through.

Naomi Alderman

live whatever will fun

I was incredibly inspired by Oprah Winfrey as a young woman.

Naomi Alderman

oprah-winfrey woman inspired young

We human beings get nervous if we don't know what's going on. It's the rule for creating scary stories: the unknown is always more frightening than the known.

Naomi Alderman

human more know always

Sometimes you feel like the people who invest in hate are winning. Then you just want to talk about love and what it really means to love yourself.

Naomi Alderman

yourself you love people

I find the sneeriness about 'selfie-culture' quite boring - I'm excited by young people taking control of their own images and finding out for themselves how much Photoshop has done for models.

Naomi Alderman

control boring done people

It is a very different feeling to be in a fat body that is moving a lot to one that hardly moves at all. It feels like love. As simple and as joyful as that.

Naomi Alderman

fat feeling simple love

People who were always hardbodies love that competitive style of team-sports activity: they come up with timers and fitness contests and personal bests. But for the vast majority of people, competition in exercise is not fun. It's no fun to compete if you know you can never win.

Naomi Alderman

you style fitness love

If I'm working every day, it's like pumping a pump. When you start, rusty water comes out, and then it runs clear. I do it even if I get completely stuck.

Naomi Alderman

every-day day you water

The politics of fear are always the same. They are easily recognisable in retrospect. They are easy to acquiesce in at the time.

Naomi Alderman

politics fear easy time

Expect to be disgusted by your own early work. If writing is your vocation, if you hope that it might be your salvation, push on through the disgust until you find one true sentence, a few words that say more than you expected, something you didn't know until you set it down.

Naomi Alderman

words you hope work

I hate to be one of those people who forwards links to 'hilarious pictures' or 'brilliant games' to half their contacts database.

Naomi Alderman

pictures hate half people

It's hard to describe why one room and not another feels right for writing. Of course you have to train yourself to be able to write anywhere, but it's nice to feel that each book has a place that belongs to it, where it's home.

Naomi Alderman

yourself feel you home

It's very easy for a writer to spend much too much time in her head.

Naomi Alderman

head too-much easy time