Imperfect Women Quotes

“But underneath all that was also the knowledge that she wasn’t wrong for wanting something different. Women in this world are still expected to conform, even though it doesn’t seem like that anymore. You can be many things in this life, but a dissatisfied woman is not one of them. What’s wrong with you, men ask as they push forward, why aren’t you happy back there, why isn’t it enough? Pimps say it to their hookers in the same way rich men say it to their wives, in the same way bosses say it to their employees, in the same way fathers say it to mothers. Sometimes we just want something different.”
― Araminta Hall, Imperfect Women

“Perhaps everyone had been wrong; perhaps anger didn’t ruin a woman, perhaps it made her stronger.”
― Araminta Hall, Imperfect Women

“Maybe death is simply an act of equality.” “What do you mean?” “That nobody’s special when it comes to death, so it’s sort of like a leveling process.”
― Araminta Hall, Imperfect Women

“we do have a responsibility to take care of ourselves and to feel precious despite our failings. Because that’s how you learn there is no such thing as perfect.”
― Araminta Hall, Imperfect Women

“we have a responsibility to those who love us. That being loved makes us precious, and that means we have to take care of ourselves.”
― Araminta Hall, Imperfect Women

“Women, Eleanor thought, carry guilt and responsibility like a second skin, so much so it weighs them down and stops them from ever achieving quite everything they should. She knew also that a man faced with the true extent of a woman’s guilt only ever really thinks that she is mad;”
― Araminta Hall, Imperfect Women

“sorrow is a bit like sacrifice. We, as women, absorb it so others don’t have to. But then one day we stand back, and we say, enough, I have done my bit, let another person take this. So we pass it on, and the next woman steps forward and it all begins again. All our sorrows and sacrifices are small, ultimately, and that is a good thing. That is the way of the world.”
― Araminta Hall, Imperfect Women

“And what was perhaps more frightening than the fact that we never know others is the fact that we never know ourselves.”
― Araminta Hall, Imperfect Women

“added up to so much less than all the things he was.”
― Araminta Hall, Imperfect Women

“Women, she realized, had to choose in a way men didn’t.”
― Araminta Hall, Imperfect Women

“She had let herself live a life that women had chained themselves to railings to avoid, a life that was meant to have vanished but actually still existed terrifyingly in too many homes. They all thought society was so fair and liberal now, but what people didn’t talk about was how it still often operated along the same old debasing lines for so many women.”
― Araminta Hall, Imperfect Women

“Sometimes I think that women are too involved with life. We dissect it and poke around, shine light into dark corners. And sometimes that’s wonderful, but sometimes it’s awful. And we shouldn’t hate men for not doing it, just like they shouldn’t hate us for doing it.”
― Araminta Hall, Imperfect Women

“Anger is often not cruelty, Eleanor, it is more often love.”
― Araminta Hall, Imperfect Women

“Nor do I believe there’s a couple out there who haven’t at some point thought about how much better it could be with someone else. But that’s all a fallacy. Even if you jack in the one you’ve got and replace them with a younger”
― Araminta Hall, Imperfect Women

“I think the reason I love tulips so much is because they give me such hope, the way they pop up so bright out of the ground just at the time when you’ve almost given up on the idea of seeing anything pretty ever again.”
― Araminta Hall, Imperfect Women

“Women, Eleanor thought, carry guilt and responsibility like a second skin, so much so it weighs them down and stops them from ever achieving quite everything they should.”
― Araminta Hall, Imperfect Women

“we do have a responsibility to take care of ourselves and to feel precious despite our failings. Because that’s how you learn there is no such thing as perfect. The sun must have come out because a shaft of bright light was shining through the glass in the door.”
― Araminta Hall, Imperfect Women

“You can be many things in this life”
― Araminta Hall, Imperfect Women

“We”
― Araminta Hall, Imperfect Women

“When my children were little and told me I was mean because I shouted at them about their manners, or told them they couldn’t eat sweets for breakfast, or all the other things that make mothers cross, I used to tell them that it takes so much more effort to be stern than it does just to say yes—that if I wanted an easy life, I would let them do all they asked. But I also told them I loved them too much to always say yes, that I took the time to scold them and argue with them so they would learn what was right or wrong. Anger is often not cruelty, Eleanor, it is more often love.”
― Araminta Hall, Imperfect Women

“simply wanted to know her—as in what was in her head, not what she represented.”
― Araminta Hall, Imperfect Women

“We’ve become confused about where to place the emphasis when it comes to death. A lot of death has no meaning. Sometimes planes just drop out of skies, or a friend gets hit over the head by a mugger, or parents trip and fall down the stairs. We live in a world now where there has to be an answer to everything. We wonder about something and Google tells us the answer, but death isn’t always like that.”
― Araminta Hall, Imperfect Women

“It’s funny,” she said, “but lots of the countries I’ve worked in, which we consider third world, value domesticity very highly. Unmarried young women are usually at the bottom of the social scale, but mothers are almost worshipped.”
― Araminta Hall, Imperfect Women