Emma A > Emma's Quotes

“Here’s to books, the cheapest vacation you can buy.”
― Charlaine Harris

“It hurts to live after someone has died. It just does. It can hurt to walk down a hallway or open the fridge. It hurts to put on a pair of socks, to brush your teeth. Food tastes like nothing. Colors go flat. Music hurts, and so do memories. You look at something you’d otherwise find beautiful—a purple sky at sunset or a playground full of kids—and it only somehow deepens the loss. Grief is so lonely this way.”
― Michelle Obama, Becoming

“Let's invite one another in. Maybe then we can begin to fear less, to make fewer wrong assumptions, to let go of the biases and stereotypes that unnecessarily divide us. Maybe we can better embrace the ways we are the same. It's not about being perfect. It's not about where you get yourself in the end. There's power in allowing yourself to be known and heard, in owning your unique story, in using your authentic voice. And there's grace in being willing to know and hear others. This, for me, is how we become.”
― Michelle Obama, Becoming

“a happy marriage can be a vexation, that it’s a contract best renewed and renewed again, even quietly and privately—even alone.”
― Michelle Obama, Becoming

“Philip May is known in politics as a man who has taken a back seat and allowed his wife, Theresa, to shine.”

Allowed.

Now let us reverse it. Theresa May has allowed her husband to shine. Does it make sense? If Philip May were prime minister, perhaps we might hear that his wife had “supported” him from the background, or that she was “behind” him, or that she’d “stood by his side,” but we would never hear that she had “allowed” him to shine.

“Allow” is a troubling word. “Allow” is about power.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions

“Do it together. Remember in primary school we learned that a verb is a 'doing' word? Well, a father is as much a verb as a mother.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions

“Yet such men do not need to imagine a male victim of crime as a brother or son in order to feel empathy.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions

“Teach her to question men who can have empathy for women only if they see them as relational rather than as individual equal humans.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions

“And never say that Chudi is "babysitting" - people who babysit are people for whom the baby is not a primary responsibility.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions

“By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes.”
― William Shakespeare, Macbeth