Dani St Clair > Dani's Quotes

“One of the most subversive institutions in the United States is the public library..”
― bell hooks, Rock My Soul: Black People and Self-Esteem

“A man who has a language consequently possesses the world expressed and implied by that language.”
― Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks

“We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller. We say to girls, you can have ambition, but not too much. You should aim to be successful, but not too successful. Otherwise, you would threaten the man. Because I am female, I am expected to aspire to marriage. I am expected to make my life choices always keeping in mind that marriage is the most important. Now marriage can be a source of joy and love and mutual support but why do we teach girls to aspire to marriage and we don’t teach boys the same? We raise girls to see each other as competitors not for jobs or accomplishments, which I think can be a good thing, but for the attention of men. We teach girls that they cannot be sexual beings in the way that boys are.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, We Should All Be Feminists

“When a woman reads a romance novel, she is putting her own pleasure first. That small act of rebellion is perceived as a threat to the status quo. It’s also why this eternally popular and profitable genre has been scorned, ridiculed and dismissed.”
― Maya Rodale

“the wounded child inside many males is a boy who, when he first spoke his truths, was silenced by paternal sadism, by a patriarchal world that did not want him to claim his true feelings. The wounded child inside many females is a girl who was taught from early childhood that she must become something other than herself, deny her true feelings, in order to attract and please others. When men and women punish each other for truth telling, we reinforce the notion that lies are better. To be loving we willingly hear the other’s truth, and most important, we affirm the value of truth telling. Lies may make people feel better, but they do not help them to know love.”
― bell hooks, All About Love: New Visions

“She talks like you. It’s not every day you hear a four-year-old say Prince Charming is a douchebag who’s only holding Cinderella back.”

"That’s my girl.”
― Emma Chase, Tangled

“The process begins with the individual woman’s acceptance that American women, without exception, are socialized to be racist, classist and sexist, in varying degrees, and that labeling ourselves feminists does not change the fact that we must consciously work to rid ourselves of the legacy of negative socialization.”
― bell hooks, Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism

“Anything written for an audience of mostly women by a community of mostly women is subversive, reflective of the current sexual, emotional, and political status, and actively embraces and undermines that status simultaneously.”
― Sarah Wendell, Beyond Heaving Bosoms: The Smart Bitches' Guide to Romance Novels

“Romance means believing you are worthy of a happy ending.”
― Sarah Wendell, Everything I Know About Love I Learned from Romance Novels

“All truth is fiction, really, for the teller tells it as he sees it, and it might be different from some other teller.”
― Witi Ihimaera, The Matriarch

“You want to know about anybody? See what books they read, and how they've been read...”
― Keri Hulme, The Bone People

“To quote French author François Mauriac, ‘Tell me what you read and I'll tell you who your are' is true enough, but I'd know you better if you told me what you reread.”
― Sarah Wendell, Everything I Know About Love I Learned from Romance Novels

“really, is there a ruder thing to do than put someone down based on what she reads? It’s a classist, obnoxious, and utterly grotesque use of energy.”
― Sarah Wendell, Beyond Heaving Bosoms: The Smart Bitches' Guide to Romance Novels

“Loneliness had taught Harriet that there was always someone who understood - it was just so often that they were dead, and in a book.”
― Eva Ibbotson, A Company of Swans

“Just because we've never done it doesn't mean we can't do it.”
― Eva Ibbotson, The Dragonfly Pool

“Hope for the best. Expect the worst. Plan for both.”
― Joanna Bourne, Rogue Spy

“Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.”
― Sun Tzu, The Art of War