Via

“You shall not be an ugly girl. Do not spend hours in the sun, lest your already dark skin grows darker. Be a Lady, with a pretty smile and a pretty face. Look how your hair is limp and dry, your lips chapped, like a ghost! Look at your lipstick with its too-bright shade, how your purse is ratty and frayed. Change your sinful ways and make them pleasing unto me, says the Lord your Mother.”
― Daphne Palasi Andreades, Brown Girls

“Not all men have made women fearful, but yes, all women have experienced fear because of men.”
― Jia Tolentino, Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion

“Years later, on Instagram, I’d read a meme that read, “Why were we taught to fear the witches instead of the men who burned them?” And who were witches, anyway, but women with knowledge, skills, and names?”
― Tia Levings, A Well-Trained Wife: My Escape from Christian Patriarchy

“And what is love, in the end?" Alabaster said. "Except the irrational desire to put evolutionary competitiveness aside in order to ease someone else's journey through life?”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow