Michele Walker

“Culture is not your friend. Culture is for other peoples’ convenience and the convenience of various institutions, churches, companies, tax collection schemes, what have you. It is not your friend. It insults you. It disempowers you. It uses and abuses you. None of us are well-treated by culture.”
― Terence McKenna

“Aye. You gender-malcontent. You otherling,” she said, the fog of anesthesia wearing off. She could see him clearly now. The curl of his lashes. The white flecks of skin over his dry lips. “Me too. I am a boy and a girl and a witch all wrapped into one very strange, flimsy, indecisive body. Do you think my body couldn’t decide what it wanted to be?” “I think it doesn’t matter because we get to decide what our bodies are or are not,” he answered. Aster sat up, and Theo helped her prop two pillows beneath her head. “Is that so? Then I am magic. I say it, therefore it is true,” she said.”
― Rivers Solomon, An Unkindness of Ghosts

“Sometimes I feel old. Old in my skin and my bones. I remember when I turned nine at my mama's house, I could still feel a little eight left in me. But when I turned ten in this place, there was not any nine left to spare. Now I am afraid I might already have used up the rest of my eleven and most of my twelve too.”
― Kathryn Stockett, The Calamity Club

“Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul and sings the tune without the words and never stops at all!”
― Kathryn Stockett, The Calamity Club