Mary > Mary's Quotes

“I could recognize him by touch alone, by smell; I would know him blind, by the way his breaths came and his feet struck the earth. I would know him in death, at the end of the world.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“Kids can always tell the difference between adults who want to empower them, and adults who want to overpower them.”
― Ashley C. Ford, Somebody's Daughter

“When my life was new, I understood in my bones how little it mattered what anybody else was doing, or what they thought about what I was doing. I believed my bones then.”
― Ashley C. Ford, Somebody's Daughter

“A home isn't always the house we live in. It's also the people we choose to surround ourselves with.”
― T.J. Klune, The House in the Cerulean Sea

“Your voice is a weapon. Never forget that.”
― T.J. Klune, The House in the Cerulean Sea

“I survived because I remained soft, because I listened, because I wrote. Because I huddled close to my truth, protected it like a tiny flame in a terrible storm. Hold up your head when the tears come, when you are mocked, insulted, questioned, threatened, when they tell you you are nothing, when your body is reduced to openings. The journey will be longer than you imagined, trauma will find you again and again. Do not become the ones who hurt you. Stay tender with your power. Never fight to injure, fight to uplift. Fight because you know that in this life, you deserve safety, joy, and freedom. Fight because it is your life. Not anyone else’s. I did it, I am here. Looking back, all the ones who doubted or hurt or nearly conquered me faded away, and I am the only one standing. So now, the time has come. I dust myself off, and go on.”
― Chanel Miller, Know My Name: A Memoir

“My pain was never more valuable than his potential.”
― Chanel Miller, Know My Name

“When a woman is assaulted, one of the first questions people ask is, Did you say no? This question assumes that the answer was always yes, and that it is her job to revoke the agreement. To defuse the bomb she was given. But why are they allowed to touch us until we physically fight them off? Why is the door open until we have to slam it shut?”
― Chanel Miller, Know My Name: A Memoir

“When I listened to her, I understood: You have to hold out to see how your life unfolds, because it is most likely beyond what you can imagine. It is not a question of if you will survive this, but what beautiful things await you when you do. I had to believe her, because she was living proof. Then she said, Good and bad things come from the universe holding hands. Wait for the good to come.”
― Chanel Miller, Know My Name

“When you write about you and me? Just tell the truth. Your truth. Don’t worry about nobody’s feelings, especially not mine. You gotta be tough to tell your truth, but it’s the only thing worth doing next to loving somebody.”
― Ashley C. Ford, Somebody's Daughter

“I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my ship.”
― Louisa May Alcott, Little Women

“I like good strong words that mean something…”
― Louisa May Alcott, Little Women

“In the darkness, two shadows, reaching through the hopeless, heavy dusk. Their hands meet, and light spills in a flood like a hundred golden urns pouring out of the sun.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“He is half of my soul, as the poets say.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“I am made of memories.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“They seemed angry that I’d made myself vulnerable, more than the fact that he’d acted on my vulnerability.”
― Chanel Miller, Know My Name

“I used to shrink at harsh tones, used to be afraid. Until I learned it takes nothing to be hostile. Nothing. It is easy to be the one yelling, chucking words that burn like coals, neon red, meant to harm. I have learned I am water. The coals sizzle, extinguishing when they reach me. I see how, those fiery coals are just black stones, sinking to the bottom.”
― Chanel Miller, Know My Name

“This book does not have a happy ending. The happy part is there is no ending, because I'll always find a way to keep going.”
― Chanel Miller, Know My Name

“Little girls don’t stay little forever, Kyle Stephens said. They turn into strong women who return to destroy your world.”
― Chanel Miller, Know My Name: A Memoir

“You are allowed to be cautious but you don’t always have to be afraid.”
― Chanel Miller, Know My Name: A Memoir

“I will not stay, not ever again - in a room or conversation or relationship or institution that requires me to abandon myself.”
― Glennon Doyle, Untamed

“Mothers have martyred themselves in their children’s names since the beginning of time. We have lived as if she who disappears the most, loves the most. We have been conditioned to prove our love by slowly ceasing to exist.

What a terrible burden for children to bear—to know that they are the reason their mother stopped living. What a terrible burden for our daughters to bear—to know that if they choose to become mothers, this will be their fate, too. Because if we show them that being a martyr is the highest form of love, that is what they will become. They will feel obligated to love as well as their mothers loved, after all. They will believe they have permission to live only as fully as their mothers allowed themselves to live.

If we keep passing down the legacy of martyrdom to our daughters, with whom does it end? Which woman ever gets to live? And when does the death sentence begin? At the wedding altar? In the delivery room? Whose delivery room—our children’s or our own? When we call martyrdom love we teach our children that when love begins, life ends. This is why Jung suggested: There is no greater burden on a child than the unlived life of a parent.”
― Glennon Doyle, Untamed

“Unkindness is a serial killer.”
― Tarana Burke, Unbound: My Story of Liberation and the Birth of the Me Too Movement

“You deserve safety.
You deserve protection.
You deserve love.
You deserve peace.
Breathe beloved.
Let's do it together. Right now!
Breathe in what I'm saying. Breathe out what you were thinking.
We tell the world they don't have to be anything but themselves to be worthy. And then we work until the stress is about to kill us to prove our worth. It's not just you. It’s not just us. It's the paradox of deeply melanated women. But right now I need you to hear me, because if we are still alive, then there is still hope to beat this thing.”
― Tarana Burke, You Are Your Best Thing: Vulnerability, Shame Resilience, and the Black Experience

“Ashley, you’re the only person who has to live in your skin, and wake up with the consequences of your choices. That’s why you can’t let other people make the big choices for you. You have to do what it feels right to do, and you can’t let anybody stop you.” I heard the stifled smile again. “Not even me.”
― Ashley C. Ford, Somebody's Daughter

“If you don’t get out there and define yourself, you’ll be quickly and inaccurately defined by others.”
― Michelle Obama, Becoming

“Do we settle for the world as it is, or do we work for the world as it should be?”
― Michelle Obama, Becoming

“Friendships between women, as any woman will tell you, are built of a thousand small kindnesses... swapped back and forth and over again.”
― Michelle Obama, Becoming

“We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller. We say to girls, you can have ambition, but not too much. You should aim to be successful, but not too successful. Otherwise, you would threaten the man. Because I am female, I am expected to aspire to marriage. I am expected to make my life choices always keeping in mind that marriage is the most important. Now marriage can be a source of joy and love and mutual support but why do we teach girls to aspire to marriage and we don’t teach boys the same? We raise girls to see each other as competitors not for jobs or accomplishments, which I think can be a good thing, but for the attention of men. We teach girls that they cannot be sexual beings in the way that boys are.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, We Should All Be Feminists

“Don't ignore half of me so you can fit me into a box. Don't do that.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo