Jessie

“Don't lament so much about how your career is going to turn out. You don't have a career. You have a life. Do the work. Keep the faith. Be true blue. You are a writer because you write. Keep writing and quit your bitching. Your book has a birthday. You don't know what it is yet.”
― Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar

“Perhaps Louisa didn't need to detail what Marmee is so angry about nearly every day of her life. To be a woman is to know anger. To be underestimated, treated as inferior, have one's concerns classified as minor, to do all the work and receive none of the glory--how could one not feel angry? And yet in order to be a good woman who stands a chance at being loved and accepted, back then and still very much so now, one has to learn, as Marmee advises Jo, not to show it, even better not to feel it. Anger in a woman runs the risk of being pathologized, penalized, criminalized. A woman is supposed to bear the violence of patriarchy--both the bloody and the bloodless forms--with unflappable cheeriness (p.66)”
― Jenny Zhang, March Sisters: On Life, Death, and Little Women

“If I'm an advocate for anything, it's to move. As far as you can, as much as you can. Across the ocean, or simply across the river. The extent to which you can walk in someone else's shoes or at least eat their food, it's a plus for everybody.

Open your mind, get up off the couch, move.”
― Anthony Bourdain

“Jo is the one who writes popular fiction for money, Amy is the one who scrapes together what materials she can find to pursue her artistic ambitions and makes no money, as yet. Jo's moneymaking is seen as a necessity so that the Marches can get by. But because Amy dresses well, behaves properly, and gets along with Aunt March, and because, unlike Jo, she does not dismiss the idea of marrying for money, readers may misunderstand Amy. Amy is not more selfish than Jo, she is more canny...Amy has already demonstrated the value of reason, understanding, thoughtfulness, getting along. If we return to the spot in part one where Marmee tells Meg and Jo what she wants for her daughters, the first descriptive word out of her mouth is 'beautiful.' It is Amy who has done what her mother wanted, who has used her looks, i.e., to become beautiful in the eyes of society, to get ahead, but she has done so not out of vanity or greed but because, through her art, she has sought to understand the nature of beauty--in herself, in admiring Aunt March's jewelry, in painting, in relationships”
― Jane Smiley, March Sisters: On Life, Death, and Little Women