Giulia

“We teach our girls how not to get raped with a sense of doom, a sense that we are fighting a losing battle. When I was writing this novel, friend after friend came to me telling me of something that had happened to them. A hand up their skirt, a boy who wouldn’t take no for an answer, a night where they were too drunk to give consent but they think it was taken from them anyway. We shared these stories with one another and it was as if we were discussing some essential part of being a woman, like period cramps or contraceptives. Every woman or girl who told me these stories had one thing in common: shame. ‘I was drunk . . . I brought him back to my house . . . I fell asleep at that party . . . I froze and I didn’t tell him to stop . . .’ My fault. My fault. My fault. When I asked these women if they had reported what had happened to the police, only one out of twenty women said yes. The others looked at me and said, ‘No. How could I have proved it? Who would have believed me?’ And I didn’t have any answer for that.”
― Louise O'Neill, Asking For It

“There was beauty in the idea of freedom, but it was an illusion. Every human heart was chained by love.”
― Cassandra Clare, Lady Midnight

“She bent most of the rules. She broke the rest.”
― V.E. Schwab, A Gathering of Shadows

“He fears because he is small. I will not meet him there. I will not shrink down to his size, or anyone else's, for their comfort, for their appeasement.”
― Rachel Harrison, Cackle