Miriam > Miriam's Quotes

“Have no fear of perfection - you'll never reach it.”
― Salvador Dali

“Men don’t think any differently from women—they just make more noise about being able to.”
― Tamora Pierce, The Woman Who Rides Like a Man

“My life was narrated for me by others. Their voices were forceful, emphatic, absolute. It had never occurred to me that my voice might be as strong as theirs.”
― Tara Westover, Educated

“I have always felt that violence was the last refuge of the incompetent, and empty threats the last sanctuary of the terminally inept.”
― Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere

“I'm scared,' I said, 'There doesn't seem to be any way out.'

'No,' Beth corrected me, 'there are in fact several ways out, but all of them are painful. You have to know your own tolerance for pain, what you can endure, what you know you can live with and what you can't live without.”
― Kate Mulgrew, Born with Teeth

“I think you’re wrong there. It feels selfish at the time, because the pain is excruciating, but there is no nobility in hanging on to something that is miserable and false. We have to fight for our happiness in life.”
― Kate Mulgrew, Born with Teeth

“The work did not let me down, and neither did the part. When Mulgrew suffered, Janeway picked her up. And when Janeway felt like giving up, Mulgrew slapped her into shape. I was put to good use in every way, and this saved me.”
― Kate Mulgrew, Born with Teeth

“Picasso wasn’t in conflict, you can bet your bottom dollar on that. He said, Scram! I need to work, and his mistresses and their spawn ran for the hills. Dickens wasn’t in conflict. He had ten children and wrote as many novels in almost as many years, because it was both understood and appreciated that he was gifted, famous, and rich. The male artist has always been respected.”
― Kate Mulgrew, Born with Teeth

“Now I think it’s one of the most useless questions an adult can ask a child—What do you want to be when you grow up? As if growing up is finite. As if at some point you become something and that’s the end.”
― Michelle Obama, Becoming

“I've wanted to ask my detractors which part of that phrase matters to them the most -- is it "angry" or "black" or "woman"?”
― Michelle Obama, Becoming

“A familiar image of a grim, frozen Russia is the babushka, the old woman, hunched and determined, head wrapped in a scarf. Her gnarled face stares out from old Ellis Island photographs and modern cable specials, and never fails to elicit awwwwws from concerned Westerners who'd love nothing more than to hug poor, helpless Granny and tell her that everything's going to be all right. That is misguided, and potentially hazardous. Women who had survived long enough to become grandmothers by the 1980s were Russia's rocks. Their generation had a hard life, even by the unforgiving standards of mother Russia. Forged from the crucible of wars, famines, and purges, the babushki had witnessed entire populations of husbands and sons vanish into the grave. These women were instilled with fierce matriarchal instinct, the notion that they were responsible for the welfare of all society, not just their kin, and underneath their kerchiefs the babushki watched, and listened, and remembered, and commanded.”
― Lev Golinkin, A Backpack, a Bear, and Eight Crates of Vodka: A Memoir

“This undying vigilance is such a part of the Jewish psyche that it might as well be genetic. Nomads we are, and nomads we remain. Cars replaced caravans, tents calcified into houses, yet the wanderings of old course through us, simmering under the surface.”
― Lev Golinkin, A Backpack, a Bear, and Eight Crates of Vodka: A Memoir

“We may be small, and we may be young, but we will shake the world for our beliefs.”
― Samantha Shannon, The Priory of the Orange Tree

“Enforcing silence is easy. All you have to do is make it feel like the safest option. You can, for example, make speaking as unpleasant as possible, by creating an anonymous social media account to flood women with virulent personal criticism, sexual harassment, and threats. You can talk over women, or talk down to them, until they begin to doubt that they have anything worthwhile to say. You can encourage men's speech, and ignore women's, so that women will get the message that they are taking up too much room, and contributing too little value. You can nitpick a woman's actual voice—the way she writes, her grammar, her tone, her register, her accent—until she honestly believes she's bad at talking, and spends more time trying to sound 'better' than thinking about what she wants to say.

And if a woman somehow makes it past all this, you can humiliate her anyway.”
― Sady Doyle, Trainwreck: The Women We Love to Hate, Mock, and Fear... and Why

“Sometimes I get so immersed in my own company, if I unexpectedly run into someone I know, it's a bit of a shock and takes me a while to adjust.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“We believe the one who has power. He is the one who gets to write the story. So when you study history, you must ask yourself, Whose story am I missing? Whose voice was suppressed so that this voice could come forth? Once you have figured that out, you must find that story too. From there you get a clearer, yet still imperfect, picture.”
― Yaa Gyasi, Homegoing

“You want to know what weakness is? Weakness is treating someone as though they belong to you. Strength is knowing that everyone belongs to themselves.”
― Yaa Gyasi, Homegoing

“The family is like the forest: if you are outside it is dense; if you are inside you see that each tree has its own position.”
― Yaa Gyasi, Homegoing

“Only boys and fools think men are first in courage. We do not bear children.”
― Katherine Arden, The Girl in the Tower

“People never think, until it happens to their place, that all construction is destruction. The whole planet is paved in the dead, who are ignored so the living can dig their foundations.”
― Maria Dahvana Headley, The Mere Wife

“There's a long tradition that says women gossip, when in fact women are the memory of the world. We keep the family trees and the baby books. We manage the milk teeth. We keep the census of diseases, the records of divorces, battles and medals. We witness the wills. We wash the weddings our of the bedsheets.
We know everything there is to know, and we keep it rolled into the newel posts, stuffed into the mattresses, smuggled inside our vaginas if it comes to that. Women's clothing is made without pockets, but we come into the world equipped”
― Maria Dahvana Headley, The Mere Wife

“The women of Juarez, and women across the world, do not want to have to take revenge, any more than Procne and Philomela did. What they want is to be able to rely on the modern gods -- the police, the courts, and the media -- for justice.”
― Helen Morales, Antigone Rising: The Subversive Power of the Ancient Myths

“Read a thousand books, and your words will flow like a river.”
― Lisa See, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan

“Obey, obey, obey, then do what you want.”
― Lisa See, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan

“the human body is a miniature version of the universe - the eyes and ears are the sun and moon, breath is air, blood is rain.”
― Lisa See, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan

“Peace is not happenstance. It is a living fire that must be fed constantly. It must be tended with vigilance, else it dies out.”
― Libba Bray, The Sweet Far Thing

“You could believe you were living virtuously and also murder people if you were a fanatic. Fanatics thought that murdering people was virtuous, or murdering certain people.”
― Margaret Atwood

“Hail to the Lady of the Ninth House,” warbled a voice delightedly, bringing the count of people who had ever been happy to see Harrow up to three.”
― Tamsyn Muir, Gideon the Ninth

“Gideon slid her glasses back onto her face, obscuring feelings with tint.”
― Tamsyn Muir, Gideon the Ninth

“He urged again, “Thoughts?” Gideon said, “Did you know that if you put the first three letters of your last name with the first three letters of your first name, you get ‘Sex Pal’?”
― Tamsyn Muir, Gideon the Ninth