By Any Other Name

by Jodi Picoult

How charmed a life: to play at being a woman yet take off the costume at the end of the day and go about the world with the privileges of a man.

A playwright had taken a fresh, blank sheet of paper and from it, had made three thousand strangers feel.

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.

“I am more than this. It does not matter what you see when you look at me, because you will never know me the way I know myself. And even if I am the only person in the world with that knowledge, it does not make it any less real.”

I have often thought that the reason young ladies are denied a classical education is because, all things being equal, men would be left behind in the dust.”

What was the most frightening thing one could possibly say to a man? That a woman’s dreams, hopes, desires, flaws, and foibles were no different from his. That men and women were equals.

being remembered by many was far less important than being remembered by a few who mattered.