Recollections of My Nonexistence

by Rebecca Solnit

I did not do it particularly well or clearly, but I did it ferociously.

it was the luck of being able to continue to evolve, of being someone gradually, imperceptibly changing, sometimes by intention, sometimes by increments and impulses invisible to me.

Possibility means that you might be many things that you are not yet, and it is intoxicating when it’s not terrifying.

Her annihilation was his realization.

half the earth is paved over with women’s fear and pain, or rather with the denial of them, and until the stories that lie underneath see sunlight, this will not change.

Being thin is seen as a virtue, as a consequence of discipline, and self-restraint, and so it’s often admired as though it is a sign of character. But it’s often just a sign of the genetic lottery or that phase of youth before the flesh catches up with the bones.

Femininity at its most brutally conventional is a perpetual disappearing act, an erasure and a silencing to make more room for men, one in which your existence is considered an aggression and your nonexistence a form of gracious compliance.