The Book of Etta Quotes

“Before the plague, women were rulers and peacekeepers and cooks and dancers and whatever they wanted to be. And they had medicine that made it impossible to get pregnant. They were free. And now they’re property almost everywhere, raped to death and sold to monsters by monsters.”
― Meg Elison, The Book of Etta

“I think that in the old world, women were slaves. Maybe not like they are now, but somebody needed that vest. Somebody needed her pills or her rings to keep from getting pregnant. Maybe slavery just looked nicer back then.”
― Meg Elison, The Book of Etta

“Men aren’t rational, you know.” He put his hands at his hips and leaned back a little. “It’s not our fault, it just how we’re made. We don’t bleed like women, so we have to find ways to bleed like men. It leads us into foolhardy things. Like the wars of the old world.”
― Meg Elison, The Book of Etta

“You didn’t see me because you think there are only two kinds of things in the world. Men and women. Good and evil. Slavers and rescuers. You’ve seen more of the world than I have, but you know less about it. There’s more in this world than you can even dream about, Eddy.”
― Meg Elison, The Book of Etta

“This gun is blank and empty, and you can fill the cylinder with anything at all. You can pack it with dirt or fill it with bullets. You can change the world forever, depending on where you point it. You can leave behind terror or justice. You can be as important as the Unnamed, or as lost as any of the men she put down with it. You hear?” Etta”
― Meg Elison, The Book of Etta

“Men aren’t rational, you know.” He put his hands at his hips and leaned back a little. “It’s not our fault, it just how we’re made. We don’t bleed like women, so we have to find ways to bleed like men.”
― Meg Elison, The Book of Etta

“I wish I was neither. I wish nobody cared.”
― Meg Elison, The Book of Etta

“There is no such things as safe wanting. Safe wanting always turns into ownership. Desire turns to chains faster than you can breath in to say no. Be careful what you decide you're going to be. Outside the walls of cities like Nowhere, women become things.”
― Meg Elison, The Book of Etta

“There is no such things as safe wanting. Safe wanting always turns into ownership. Desire turns to chains faster than you can breath in to say no. Be careful what you decide you're going to be. Outside the walls of city like Nowhere, women become things.”
― Meg Elison, The Book of Etta

“The Unnamed was Etta’s hero. Not as a Midwife, but as a survivor, a person who could be anything they had to be to survive.”
― Meg Elison, The Book of Etta

“He looked at the stalagmites, remembering when Ricardo had taught him the word. The way they reached up with all their might, while the stalactites that hung down hung on tight. He had known, even then, that inside every man and woman there was a place like this, made of stone that changed slowly, shaped by the trickling of what they saw, heard, did. Rage”
― Meg Elison, The Book of Etta

“My living daughter, life doesn’t ever hold what you wish it would. But it holds things you can’t even dream of yet, because you haven’t seen them. Do you understand me?” Etta”
― Meg Elison, The Book of Etta

“So you’d rather be like them? The hunter, rather than the hunted?” Flora’s voice simmered with anger. “That’s”
― Meg Elison, The Book of Etta