Prize Women Quotes

“I also wanted to present the idea of the Stork Derby as metaphor: for the ways in which women are often on unofficial public trial for the decisions they make in private. It’s a strange dichotomy that women’s domestic lives are often ignored (and that fictional presentations of these lives are often dismissed or trivialized). And yet these are some of the lives that are most harshly judged by the media: for stepping outside the unspoken constraints of the domestic ideal, women are often ruthlessly condemned.”
― Caroline Lea, Prize Women

“There is cynicism in her voice, but there is something else too: fear. The same fear that any mother feels when she hears about a sick child. The same dread that will wake her every night and won’t allow her to go back to sleep until she has laid a hand on each sleeping child’s chest, kissed their warm forehead.”
― Caroline Lea, Prize Women

“Please what? Forgive you? You’ve taken everything from me, and now you want me to forgive you as well?”
― Caroline Lea, Prize Women

“Men abandon their wives all the time, without ever being asked if they are ‘good’. Being a good man can mean many things. To be a good woman means being an obedient wife and dutiful mother. A woman must help other people. A man helps himself.”
― Caroline Lea, Prize Women

“There are some darknesses, beneath everything else, that remain no matter what.”
― Caroline Lea, Prize Women