Claire C

“Suppose, for instance, that men were only represented in literature as the lovers of women, and were never the friends of men, soldiers, thinkers, dreamers; how few parts in the plays of Shakespeare could be allotted to them; how literature would suffer! We might perhaps have most of Othello; and a good deal of Antony; but no Caesar, no Brutus, no Hamlet, no Lear, no Jaques--literature would be incredibly impoverished, as indeed literature is impoverished beyond our counting by the doors that have been shut upon women.”
― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

“Men are not so much the keepers of herds as herds are the keepers of men.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden or, Life in the Woods

“Landscapes like ours were created by and survive through the efforts of nobodies. That's why I was so shocked to be given such a dead, rich, white man's version of its history at school. This is a landscape of modest, hardworking people. The real history of our landscape should be the history of the nobodies.”
― James Rebanks, The Shepherd's Life: A People's History of the Lake District

“How is it that we never completely comprehend our love for someone until they’re gone?”
― Patti Smith, M Train: A Memoir