Female Experience Quotes

“You know that worried feeling?" Rose responded straight into Lily's ear. Not a whisper, but not loud enough for anyone else. "That feeling in your gut all the time, no matter the quality or intention of your company, like your safety is a gift from the men around you, not a right?"
Page 248”
― Claudia Lux, Sign Here

“Before that she believed her body's only power was in the currency its shape gave her, which made her worth something to the strong. It wasn't until she brought her children into the world through nothing but her body's force that she realized she could be strong herself.
Page 171”
― Claudia Lux, Sign Here

“Whites might dirty her all right, but not her best thing, her beautiful, magical best thing-the part of her that was clean. No undreamable dreams about whether the headless, feetless torso hanging in the tree with a sign on it was her husband or Paul A; whether the bubbling-hot girls in the colored-school fire set by patriots included her daughter; whether a gang of whites invaded her daughter's private parts, soiled her daughter's thighs and threw her daughter out of the wagon. *She* might have to work in the slaughterhouse yard, but not her daughter.”
― Toni Morrison, Beloved

“I washed her with slow, careful gestures, first letting her squat in the tub, then asking her to stand up: I still have in my ears the sound of the dripping water, and the impression that the copper of the tub had a consistency not different from Lila's flesh, which was smooth, solid, calm. I had a confusion of feelings and thoughts: embrace her, weep with her, kiss her, pull her hair, pretend to sexual experience and instruct her in a learned voice, distancing her with words just at the moment of greatest closeness. But in the end there was only the hostile thought that I was washing her, from her hair to the soles of her feet, early in the morning, just so Stefano could sully her in the course of the night. I imagined her naked as she was at that moment, entwined with her husband, in the bed in the new house, while the train clattered under their windows and his violent flesh entered her with a sharp blow, like the cork pushed by the palm into the neck of a wine bottle. And it suddenly seemed to me that the only remedy against the pain I was feeling, that I would feel, was to find a corner secluded enough so that Antonio could do to me, at the same time, the exact same thing.”
― Elena Ferrante; translated by Ann Goldstein, My Brilliant Friend