Emma > Emma's Quotes

“Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.”
― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

“Men always say that as the defining compliment, don’t they? She’s a cool girl. Being the Cool Girl means I am a hot, brilliant, funny woman who adores football, poker, dirty jokes, and burping, who plays video games, drinks cheap beer, loves threesomes and anal sex, and jams hot dogs and hamburgers into her mouth like she’s hosting the world’s biggest culinary gang bang while somehow maintaining a size 2, because Cool Girls are above all hot. Hot and understanding. Cool Girls never get angry; they only smile in a chagrined, loving manner and let their men do whatever they want. Go ahead, shit on me, I don’t mind, I’m the Cool Girl.

Men actually think this girl exists. Maybe they’re fooled because so many women are willing to pretend to be this girl. For a long time Cool Girl offended me. I used to see men – friends, coworkers, strangers – giddy over these awful pretender women, and I’d want to sit these men down and calmly say: You are not dating a woman, you are dating a woman who has watched too many movies written by socially awkward men who’d like to believe that this kind of woman exists and might kiss them. I’d want to grab the poor guy by his lapels or messenger bag and say: The bitch doesn’t really love chili dogs that much – no one loves chili dogs that much! And the Cool Girls are even more pathetic: They’re not even pretending to be the woman they want to be, they’re pretending to be the woman a man wants them to be. Oh, and if you’re not a Cool Girl, I beg you not to believe that your man doesn’t want the Cool Girl. It may be a slightly different version – maybe he’s a vegetarian, so Cool Girl loves seitan and is great with dogs; or maybe he’s a hipster artist, so Cool Girl is a tattooed, bespectacled nerd who loves comics. There are variations to the window dressing, but believe me, he wants Cool Girl, who is basically the girl who likes every fucking thing he likes and doesn’t ever complain. (How do you know you’re not Cool Girl? Because he says things like: “I like strong women.” If he says that to you, he will at some point fuck someone else. Because “I like strong women” is code for “I hate strong women.”)”
― Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl

“Saskia’s bedroom is messy and cramped, but in an eccentric, smart way. Books are stacked all over the floor, but her bookshelf is empty, suggesting that she is the kind of person who reads seventy-five books at once.”
― Greg Baxter, The Apartment

“You're the only person I've ever met who can stand a bookstore as long as I can.”
― Junot Díaz, This Is How You Lose Her

“So now I just assume that it won't work, and that if it does work, I'll lose it anyway. This is meant to protect me, although it doesn't, because somehow the hope sneakily finds its way in. I'm never aware of the hope until it's gone, whooshed away like a rug pulled from under my feet, each time I hear another "I'm sorry.”
― Liane Moriarty, What Alice Forgot

“The reactions of others were actually another lesson she'd learned about change. When change happened to an individual, it happened to everyone around her - sometimes in ways she wished for, though sometimes in ways she wished against.”
― Rachel Simon, The Story of Beautiful Girl

“There's a difference between really loving someone and loving the idea of her.”
― Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl

“You can never escape who you are, never truly anonymise yourself. Even if you never speak to anyone, people see you, and they get to know you for themselves.”
― Greg Baxter, The Apartment

“Just because you survive something does not mean you are strong.”
― Roxane Gay, Bad Feminist: Essays

“Oh girl, we have known littlebit love. That littlebit of honey left in an empty jar that traps the sweetness in your mouth long enough to mask your hunger. We have run tongues over teeth to savor that last littlebit as long as we could, and in all our living, nothing has starved us more.”
― Brit Bennett, The Mothers

“I diminished and demeaned them without considering what that stripped from me in the process.”
― Andrea Warner, We Oughta Know

“...I learned a valuable lesson about opportunities: even if an experience doesn't seem like it will benefit you, do your best to make sure it does.”
― Andrea Warner, We Oughta Know

“If I didn't channel my feelings into angry tears, I would probably have an assault record by now. Tears are "too emotional", too "girly", or "too unreasonable". Bullshit. Sometimes I cry so that I don't rip a dude's throat out.”
― Andrea Warner, We Oughta Know

“A woman filled with light makes everything she touches brighter.”
― Jill Santopolo, The Light We Lost

“I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look or the words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun.”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice