The Curated Reader > The Curated Reader's Quotes

“You should write about take no-shit women like me. Girls need to know they can break the rules" p.79”
― Gloria Steinem, My Life on the Road

“As Robin Morgan wrote so wisely, "Hate generalizes, love specifies". That's what makes going on the road so important. It definitely specifies.”
― Gloria Steinem, My Life on the Road

“Sometimes I think the only real division into two is between people who divide everything into two and those who don't.”
― Gloria Steinem, My Life on the Road

“Altogether, if I'd been looking at nothing but the media all these years, I would be a much more discouraged person-especially given the notion that only conflict is news, and that objectivity means being evenhandedly negative.”
― Gloria Steinem, My Life on the Road

“This is a crucial job of being an organizer. You leave a dark basement and try to explain to people in the sunshine what it's like to live down there. I've learned this is best done by bringing these different groups of people together. Those with extra money discover how much more satisfying it is to see talent and fairness grow then to see objects accumulate. Those without money learn the valuable lesson that money doesn't cure all woes. Instead, it may actually insulate and isolate.”
― Gloria Steinem

“I myself cried when I got angry, then became unable to explain why I was angry in the first place. Later I would discover this was endemic among female human beings. Anger is supposed to be "unfeminine" so we suppress it -until it overflows. I could see that not speaking up made my mother feel worse. This was my first hint of the truism that depression is anger turned inward; thus women are twice as likely to be depressed. My mother paid a high price for caring so much, yet being able to do so little about it. In this way, she led me toward am activist place where she herself could never go.”
― Gloria Steinem, My Life on the Road

“Long before all these divisions were opened between home and the road, betweens a woman's place and a man's world, humans followed the crops, the seasons, traveling with their families, our companions, animals, our tents. We built campfires and moved from place to place. This way of traveling is still in our cellular memory. Living things have evolved as travelers, Even migrating birds know that nature doesn't demand a choice between nesting and flight.”
― Gloria Steinem, My Life on the Road

“Remember: "For want of a nail, the horseshoe was lost, for want of a horseshoe, the horse was lost, for want of a horse, the battle was lost, for want of a battle, the war was lost." This parable should be the mantra of everyone who thinks her or his vote doesn't count.”
― Gloria Steinem, My Life on the Road

“Always ask the turtle.”
― Gloria Steinem

“Swiftboating enters the English language as a verb that means attacking strength instead of weakness. In feminist and other social justice contexts, this has long been called trashing, attacking leaders for daring to write, speak, or lead at all. Taking away the good is even more lethal than pointing out the bad. p.189”
― Gloria Steinem, My Life on the Road

“You're always the person you were when you were born," she says impatiently. "You just keep finding new ways to express it.”
― Gloria Steinem, My Life on the Road

“Laughter is a rescue. p.204”
― Gloria Steinem, My Life on the Road

“You must accept the reality of other people. You think that reality is up for negotiation, that we think it's whatever you say it is. You must accept that we are as real as you are; you must accept that you are not God.”
― J.K. Rowling, The Casual Vacancy

“But who could bear to know which stars were already dead, she thought, blinking up at the night sky; could anybody stand to know that they all were?”
― J.K. Rowling, The Casual Vacancy

“The mistake ninety-nine percent of humanity made, as far as Fats could see, were being ashamed of what they were, lying about it, trying to be somebody else. Honesty was Fats' currency, his weapon and defense. It frightened people when you were honest; it shocked them. Other people, Fats had discovered, were mired in embarrasment and pretense, terrified that their truths might leak out, but Fats was attracted by rawness, by everything that was ugly but honest, by the dirty things about which the likes of his father felt humiliated and disgusted. Fats thought a lot about messiahs and pariahs; about men labeled mad or criminal; noble misfits shunned by the sleepy masses.”
― J.K. Rowling, The Casual Vacancy

“Everything want to be loved.”
― Alice Walker, The Color Purple

“His little whistle sound like it lost way down a jar, and the jar in the bottom of the creek. P. 64”
― Alice Walker, The Color Purple

“Perhaps it is better to wake up after all, even to suffer, rather than to remain a dupe to illusions all one's life.”
― Kate Chopin, The Awakening, and Selected Stories

“The bird that would soar above the level plain of tradition and prejudice must have strong wings. It is a sad spectacle to see the weaklings bruised, exhausted, fluttering back to earth.”
― Kate Chopin, The Awakening

“She was becoming herself and daily casting aside that fictitious self which we assume like a garment with which to appear before the world.”
― Kate Chopin, The Awakening