Margaret

“No matter the problem, no matter the actions of an aggressor, the fault is mine. Regardless of the politics or life experience of the person I am talking to, the answer comes like clockwork. I guess if you hate it that much, you should just lose weight. But despite its ubiquity in conversations about fatness and fat people, that is the logic of abuse. You made me do this. I wouldn’t hurt you if you didn’t make me. Just because we are accustomed to hearing it doesn’t make it healthy, productive, humane, or helpful. Its functions are threefold: One, to absolve us of any responsibility to address a widespread social problem. Two, to free us from having to re-examine our own beliefs and biases. And three, to silence and isolate fat people, to show us that any complaint we lodge and any issue we raise will be for naught, and may even cost us relationships, respect, comfort, and safety.”
― Aubrey Gordon, What We Don't Talk About When We Talk About Fat

“My mother, sometimes she says that everybody in the world is a donkey with the heart of a lion. Everybody. Only most people don’t ever discover it—they don’t have to, they get along all right just being donkeys. But it’s there, always, if you really need it. If you really want to find it. If you look for it.”
― Peter S. Beagle, I'm Afraid You've Got Dragons

“Reading 1: What is the narrative, the story? Reading 2: What is the play about? Reading 3: What does my character say about himself? Reading 4: What do other characters say about my character when he is present? Reading 5: What do other characters say about my character when he is absent? Reading 6: What is true in the play? Reading 7: What is false in the play? Reading 8: What does the character actually do?”
― Patrick Stewart, Making It So: A Memoir

“The threat of “Lock her up”—so chilling to women who heard it hurled at Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, and Christine Blasey Ford—is the threat that what looks like law will become the mechanism for undoing the law. For the millions of American women who witnessed Ford’s testimony and Kavanaugh’s response, the icy realization that male entitlement, threats, and fury could still outrun and overmaster the truth, even in a process that purported to surface the truth, was another earthquake in the Trump years. Law or the trappings of law could be used to silence and sideline women. That isn’t a fight about equality; it’s a fear of retribution.”
― Dahlia Lithwick, Lady Justice: Women, the Law, and the Battle to Save America