Juka

“Grief expressed out loud, whether in or out of character, unchoreographed and honest, for someone we have lost, or a country or home we have lost, is in itself the greatest praise we could ever give them. Grief is praise, because it is the natural way love honors what it misses.”
― Martin Prechtel, The Smell of Rain on Dust: Grief and Praise

“Books, for me, are a home. Books don’t make a home--they are one, in the sense that just as you do with a door, you open a book, and you go inside. Inside there is a different kind of time and a different kind of space.”
― Jeanette Winterson, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

“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

“I was too selfish to have a child before I was ready for one, and there's no shame in admitting that. Women should be selfish about our choices, for as long as we have the privilege of being selfish. Selfishness in women isn't the great crime that people like to pretend it is. We are as entitled as men to prioritise ourselves and our desires, and we are as capable as men of knowing what's best for us. Why is everyone so pathologically terrified of selfish women? The word is thrown around like an insult, as if the worst thing a woman could possibly do (aside from being fat, having sex with whomever she pleases and whenever, swearing, having an abortion, drinking alcohol, standing up for herself and being a working mother) is to decide that her life matters.
But women are allowed to be selfish. It shouldn't be considered a 'privilege' to be able to control our own bodies nor should it be treated like a favour done to us by the state. It's a right that, by and large, has been stolen from us and used to keep us in thrall to a paternalistic body that pretends to know what's best for us but is really only interested in maintaining the order that has proved best for them.”
― Clementine Ford, Fight Like a Girl