If These Wings Could Fly Quotes

“This is what I know of pride. I know that it keeps the secrets of cruel men. I know that it holds us in the shadows, because we are too proud to admit we need help. I know that pride values a man's reputation over a woman's life. It calls her selfish for speaking up, even when she speaks the truth. Especially then.”
― Kyrie McCauley, If These Wings Could Fly

“When the legacy is anger, the inheritance is fear.”
― Kyrie McCauley, If These Wings Could Fly

“I imagine this kind of thing happens every single day, but sometimes things are ordinary and incredible all at once.”
― Kyrie McCauley, If These Wings Could Fly

“Women who are told their obedience is more important than their voice, not by their husbands, but by their mothers, their friends. Women willing to watch each other get hurt for the sake of image and tradition.”
― Kyrie McCauley, If These Wings Could Fly

“What happens when you tell little boys every day of their lives that they must be the most? The fastest, the tallest, or the strongest. Maybe you tell them to be bravest, like that's better. Like they won't take their fear and bury it down deep in an effort to please you.
But there isn't so much room at the top, and while it might feel like disappointment when they're seven, it starts to feel like failure when they're seventeen. And then some of them become a different most. They become the meanest. The loudest. The angriest.”
― Kyrie McCauley, If These Wings Could Fly

“I like the crows because they can’t be shut behind a door, or hidden behind blinds. People can’t turn away and shake their heads and say, ‘It isn’t our problem.’
I like the crows because they refuse to be ignored.”
― Kyrie McCauley, If These Wings Could Fly

“It would have been so easy to stay mad, to dwell on it all night, but I’ve seen how that kind of anger builds on itself. I get to decide for myself what things I’ll carry, and anger isn’t going to be one of them.”
― Kyrie McCauley, If These Wings Could Fly

“I'm exhausted and freezing I'm not in the mood for any more of the half-hearted atonements of grown men.”
― Kyrie McCauley, If These Wings Could Fly

“Maybe fear is the toll women pay to exist in this world at all.”
― Kyrie McCauley, If These Wings Could Fly

“But some things should fall apart. They should burn themselves out, like a candle that's run its wick to the bottom. It's dangerous to wish for such a thing, though, because some flames are too selfish to extinguish themselves.
There are flames that would set the whole world on fire if it were the only way to kepp burning.”
― Kyrie McCauley, If These Wings Could Fly

“This is what I know of pride. I know that it keeps the secrets of cruel men. I know that it holds us in the shadows, because we are too proud to admit we need help. I know that pride values a men's reputation over a woman's life. It calls her selfish for speaking up, even when she speaks the truth. then.”
― Kyrie McCauley, If These Wings Could Fly

“mothers,”
― Kyrie McCauley, If These Wings Could Fly

“If only she knew how much I’m holding back. All the words that I don’t say. Instead, I swallow the words whole, and the letters are pointy on their corners and sharp on their edges and they hurt going down. They stay there inside of me and make my stomach ache. Sometimes I think that if someone cut me open, the words would really be there. Like a whale that consumed too much garbage, and now her body is nothing but a time capsule for all the things humans throw away.”
― Kyrie McCauley, If These Wings Could Fly

“Now everything is one shadow, and this shadow takes the shape of a closet. This closet takes the shape of a sanctuary. This sanctuary takes the shape of three girls who are flapping their wings but going nowhere.”
― Kyrie McCauley, If These Wings Could Fly

“Bitch is a sliver of word to my side. Sharp. Thick enough to hurt. But I hold my breath and pull it out. Cunt is different. Like a festering disease that settles in my gut. It lives there for months, and I can feel it there always. Heavy enough to remind me of when he said it the first time. Because it wasn't the hatred in his voice, but victory.
I've got it, it said. A tone of near pride. He knew he'd found a word that I couldn't ignore, wouldn't forget. A word cruel enough to affect my sixteen year old self. Who had never been called a name like that before. But had heard it directed at her mother enough times to know how it should hurt. A word that reduces me to an assembly of parts, less than human. A word that makes me nothing but the object of his hatred, which means I'm nothing at all.”
― Kyrie McCauley, If These Wings Could Fly