Safia

“Being too much of one thing and not enough of another had been a recurring theme in my life. I was, like many young women, expected to be small so that boys could expand and white girls could shine.

When I would not shrink, people made sure that I knew I had erred.”
― Tressie McMillan Cottom, Thick: And Other Essays

“Lonely, ain't it?
Yes, but my lonely is mine. Now your lonely is somebody else's. Made by somebody else and handed to you. Ain't that something? A secondhand lonely.”
― Toni Morrison, Sula

“Beauty is not good capital. I compounds the oppression of gender. It constrains those who identify as women against their will. It costs money and demands money. It colonizes. It hurts. It is painful. It can never be fully satisfied. It is not useful for human flourishing. Beauty is, like all capital, merely valuable.”
― Tressie McMillan Cottom, Thick: And Other Essays

“Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”
― audre lorde