By Any Other Name

by Jodi Picoult

“History,” she said, “is written by those in power.”

most people saw only what they expected to see.

She was a shadow caught between two worlds, like the faeries.

“Women are given nothing,” she said flatly. “You must learn how to take what you want.”

When it came to history, absence of evidence was not evidence of absence.

“When women talk twenty-five percent of the time in a room, people think it feels balanced. If they talk twenty-five to fifty percent of the time, it’s seen as monopolizing the discussion.”

Because a man who argues is ambitious, but a woman who argues is just a bitch.”

She did not write happy endings. As any real poet knows, the best tales are the ones that contain a kernel of truth.

when faced with yet more adversity, a woman straightened her shoulders and said, All right, I’ll take on another burden.

Just the fact that history books hadn’t included this version of events didn’t make it untrue; it merely underscored who’d controlled the narrative.

She did not understand why a woman’s accomplishment had to come at the price of a man’s worth—as if there were a finite amount of success in the universe, as if letting another into that sacred space meant someone already there would be evicted.