Grace McDonough

“Men think they live and die for ideas. What a divine joke. They live and die for emotional, personal errors, just as women do.”
― Anaïs Nin, The Diary of Anaïs Nin Volume 2 1934-1939

“Women are prepared to suffer for love; it's written into their birth certificates. Women are not prepared to have 'everything,' not success-type 'everything.' I mean, not when the 'everything' isn't about living happily ever after with the prince (where even if it falls through and the prince runs away with the baby-sitter, there's at least a precedent). There's no precedent for women getting their own 'everything' and learning that it's not the answer. Especially when you get fame, money, and love by belting out how sad and lonely and beaten you were. Which is only a darker version of the Hollywood 'everything' in which the more vulnerability and ineptness you project onto the screen, the more fame, money, and love they load you with. They'll only give you 'everything' if you appear to be totally confused. Which leaves you with very few friends.”
― Eve Babitz, Slow Days, Fast Company: The World, the Flesh, and L.A.

“The notion that the interests of the 'gentleman' and the 'rowdy' might be at odds did not intrude: then as now, the preferred narrative wanted to veil actual conflict, to cloud the extent to which the condition of being rich was predicated upon the continued neediness of the working class, to confirm the responsible stewardship of 'the gentleman' and to forestall the possibility of a self-conscious, or politicized, proletariat.”
― Joan Didion, After Henry

“To be left alone on the tightrope of youthful unknowing is to experience the excruciating beauty of full freedom and the threat of eternal indecision. Few, if any, survive their teens. Most surrender to the vague but murderous pressure of adult conformity. It becomes easier to die and avoid conflicts than to maintain a constant battle with the superior forces of maturity.”
― Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings