If you want me, you'll have to earn me. And, mister, I don't come cheap.

We're miserable because we think that we are mere individuals, alone with our fears and flaws and resentment and mortality.

I have no nostalgia for the patriarchy, please believe me. But what I have come to realize is that, when that patriarchic system was (rightfully) dismantled, it was not necessarily replaced by another form of protection. What I mean is--I never thought to ask a suitor the same challenging questions my father might have asked him, in a different age.

The French girls would tell you, to believe that you were pretty would make you so.

Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition. Whether it be true or not, I can say for one that I have no other so great as that of being truly esteemed of my fellow men, by rendering myself worthy of their esteem.

I pulled on the restraints, frustrated, hurting, and completely devastated. I could feel tears sliding down my skin, into my ears, and back over my scalp. Which told me that they’d cut off my hair, too. For some reason, that little bit of vanity was what it took to undo me completely.