Laura > Laura's Quotes

“For me, the process of embodying confidence was less about convincing myself of my own worth and more about rejecting and unlearning what society had hammered into me.”
― Lindy West, Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman

“Maybe you are thin. You hiked that trail and you are fit and beautiful and wanted and I am so proud of you, I am so in awe of your wiry brightness; and I'm miles behind you, my breathing ragged. But you didn't carry this up the mountain, You only carried yourself. How hard would you breathe if you had to carry me? You couldn't. But I can.”
― Lindy West, Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman

“The real scam is that being bones isn’t enough either. The game is rigged. There is no perfection.”
― Lindy West, Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman

“Please don’t forget: I am my body. When my body gets smaller, it is still me. When my body gets bigger, it is still me. There is not a thin woman inside me, awaiting excavation. I am one piece.”
― Lindy West, Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman

“Once you'd resolved to go, there was nothing to it at all.”
― Jeannette Walls, The Glass Castle

“One thing about whoring: It put a chicken on the table.”
― Jeannette Walls, The Glass Castle

“Sometimes you have to get sicker before you can get better.”
― Jeannette Walls, The Glass Castle

“....he said it was interesting. He used the word 'textured'. He said 'smooth' is boring but 'textured' was interesting, and the scar meant that I was stronger than whatever had tried to hurt me.”
― Jeannette Walls, The Glass Castle

“Why spend the afternoon making a meal that will be gone in an hour," she'd ask us, "when in the same amount of time, I can do a painting that will last forever?”
― Jeannette Walls, The Glass Castle

“Whoever coined the phrase 'a man's got to play the hand that was dealt him' was most certainly one piss-poor bluffer.”
― Jeannette Walls, The Glass Castle

“No child is born a delinquent. They only became that way if nobody loved them when they were kids. Unloved children grow up to be serial murderers or alcoholics.”
― Jeannette Walls, The Glass Castle

“All seasons have something to offer”
― Jeannette Walls, The Glass Castle

“Life is a drama full of tragedy and comedy," Mom told me. "You should learn to enjoy the comic episodes a little more.”
― Jeannette Walls, The Glass Castle

“New Yorkers, I figured, just pretended to be unfriendly.”
― Jeannette Walls, The Glass Castle

“Poor old Venus didn't even make her own light, Dad said. She shone only from reflected light.”
― Jeannette Walls, The Glass Castle

“But in a solitary life, there are rare moments when another soul dips near yours, as stars once a year brush the earth. Such a constellation was he to me.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“He showed me his scars, and in return he let me pretend that I had none.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“It is a common saying that women are delicate creatures, flowers, eggs, anything that may be crushed in a moment's carelessness. If I had ever believed it, I no longer did.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“I thought once that gods are the opposite of death, but I see now they are more dead than anything, for they are unchanging, and can hold nothing in their hands.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“I would say, some people are like constellations that only touch the earth for a season.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“So many years I had spent as a child sifting his bright features for his thoughts, trying to glimpse among them one that bore my name. But he was a harp with only one string, and the note it played was himself.

“You have always been the worst of my children,” he said. “Be sure to not dishonor me.”

“I have a better idea. I will do as I please, and when you count your children, leave me out.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“I will not be like a bird bred in a cage, I thought, too dull to fly even when the door stands open.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“He was another knife I could feel it. A different sort, but a knife still. I did not care. I thought: give me the blade. Some things are worth spilling blood for.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“I had been old and stern for so long, carved with regrets and years like a monolith. But that was only a shape I had been poured into. I did not have to keep it.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“I asked her how she did it once, how she understood the world so clearly. She told me that it was a matter of keeping very still and showing no emotions, leaving room for others to reveal themselves.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“He liked the way the obsidian reflected his light, the way its slick surfaces caught fire as he passed. Of course, he did not consider how black it would be when he was gone. My father has never been able to imagine the world without himself in it.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“I understood something then. My sister might be twice the goddess I was, but I was twice the witch. Her crumbling trash could not help me.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“Girls you've gotta know when it's time to turn the page.”
― Tori Amos, Tori Amos: From the Choirgirl Hotel

“So, you can make me come, that doesn't make you Jesus.”
― Tori Amos

“If they keep crashing stuff into the moon, the moon's gonna get pissed off, and the tides'll change, and all the women'll start PMS-ing together. Then you guys are going to fucking regret it.”
― Tori Amos