Erin Gassner

“There are adults who are terribly threatened by my manner, because there's something within them...I may evoke something within them that's very tender that they never knew about and that may be very frightening to them. I think that people who put me down and feel they cannot stand that presentation of gentle masculinity have not dealt with that within themselves.”
― Gavin Edwards, Kindness and Wonder: Why Mister Rogers Matters Now More Than Ever

“Stories can save your life.”
― Elizabeth Wetmore

“Male fantasies, male fantasies, is everything run by male fantasies? Up on a pedestal or down on your knees, it's all a male fantasy: that you're strong enough to take what they dish out, or else too weak to do anything about it. Even pretending you aren't catering to male fantasies is a male fantasy: pretending you're unseen, pretending you have a life of your own, that you can wash your feet and comb your hair unconscious of the ever-present watcher peering through the keyhole, peering through the keyhole in your own head, if nowhere else. You are a woman with a man inside watching a woman. You are your own voyeur.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Robber Bride

“Whatever comes," she said, "cannot alter one thing. If I am a princess in rags and tatters, I can be a princess inside. It would be easy to be a princess if I were dressed in cloth of gold, but it is a great deal more of a triumph to be one all the time when no one knows it.”
― Frances Hodgson Burnett, A Little Princess