Esther Markussen

“Are there many things in this cool-hearted world so utterly exquisite as the pure love of one woman for another woman?”
― Mary MacLane, I Await the Devil's Coming

“Had I been born a man I would by now have made a deep impression of myself on the world - on some part of it. But I am a woman, and God, or the Devil, or Fate, or whosoever it was, has flayed me of the thick outer skin and thrown me out into the midst of Life - has left me a lonely damned thing filled with the red, red blood of ambition and desire, but afraid to be touched, for there is no thick skin between my sensitive flesh and the and world s fingers.
But I want to be touched.”
― Mary MacLane, I Await the Devil's Coming

“I can think of nothing in the world like the utter littleness, the paltriness, the contemptibleness, the degradation, of the woman who is tied down under a roof with a man who is really nothing to her; who wears the man’s name, who bears the man’s children—who plays the virtuous woman. There are too many such in the world now.”
― Mary MacLane, The Story of Mary MacLane

“May I never, I say, become that abnormal, merciless animal, that deformed monstrosity— a virtuous woman. Anything, Devil, but that.”
― Mary MacLane, I Await the Devil's Coming