Sally

“The presence of a person does not destruct from, but enhances the silence, if if the other person is the right sort of hill companion. The perfect hill companion is the one whose identity is for the time being merged in that of the mountains, as you feel your own to be.”
― Nan Shepherd, The Living Mountain

“Punching up versus punching down isn’t a mandate or a hard-and-fast rule or a universal taxonomy—I’m sure any contrarian worth his salt could list exceptions all day—it’s simply a reminder that systems of power are always relevant, a helpful thought exercise for people who have trouble grasping why “bitch” is worse than “asshole.” It doesn’t mean that white people are better than black people, it means that we live in a society that treats white people better than black people, and to pretend that we don’t is an act of violence.”
― Lindy West, Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman

“Mankind was just so impossibly heavy. There were so many of them and they showed no sign of halting their endless reproduction. Stop, she wanted to cry out, please stop. You cannot all fit on the space between the oceans, you cannot grow enough food on the land beneath the mountains. You cannot graze enough livestock on the grasses around your cities, you cannot build enough homes on the peaks of your hills. You must stop, so that I can rest beneath your ever-increasing weight. She wept fat tears as she heard the cries of newborn children. No more, she said to herself. No more.”
― Natalie Haynes, A Thousand Ships

“Men's deaths are epic, women's deaths are tragic: is that it? He has misunderstood the very nature of conflict. Epic is countless tragedies, woven together. Heroes don't become heroes without carnage, and carnage has both causes and consequences. And those don't begin and end on a battlefield.”
― Natalie Haynes, A Thousand Ships