Danielle

“The first thing that struck me was how the single women of my acquaintance were exceptionally alert to the people around them, generous in their attention, ready to engage in conversation or share a joke. Having nobody to go home to at night had always seemed a sad and lonesome fate; now I saw that being forced to leave the house for human contact encourages a person to live more fully in the world. In the best instances, the result was an intricate lacework of friendships varying in intensity and closeness that could be, it seemed, just as sustaining as a nuclear family, and possibly more appealing.”
― Kate Bolick, Spinster: Making a Life of One's Own

“You are born, you grow up, you become a wife. But what if it wasn’t this way? What if a girl grew up like a boy, with marriage an abstract, someday thought, a thing to think about when she became an adult, a thing she could do, or not do, depending? What would that look and feel like?”
― Kate Bolick, Spinster: Making a Life of One's Own

“Few realizations are as demoralizing as knowing that the only thing standing between you and what you want is yourself,”
― Kate Bolick, Spinster: Making a Life of One's Own

“my mother died unexpectedly, and in the months that followed I’d been gutted to discover that without our conversations, which I’d always assumed would be there for the having, I had absolutely no idea how to make sense of myself.”
― Kate Bolick, Spinster: Making a Life of One's Own