Sari

“Carry with difficulty,” Mom said out loud, interrupting my train of thought. “What?” I said, distracted. “Six letters,” she said. “Carry with difficulty.” “Schlep,” I said.”
― Uzma Jalaluddin, Hana Khan Carries On

“That is where love and lamentation chance upon one another, and that is where we find God.”
― Chris Bohjalian, Hour of the Witch

“The thinking that women of all shapes and sizes can be beautiful is still hugely problematic, because it is predicated on the idea that the most important thing a woman has to offer the world is her appearance. Men are raised to worry about their legacies, not their upper arm and thigh fat, stretch marks, crows-feet, saggy elbows, ugly armpits, thin eyelashes, and normal-smelling genitals. This is how society keeps us out of the C-suite—it booby-traps the way to the top with self-loathing, then reroutes us on a never-ending path of self-improvement”
― Jessica Knoll, The Favorite Sister

“You light a fire early in your girlhood. You stoke it and tend it. You protect it at all costs. You don’t let it rage into a mountain of light, because that’s not becoming of a girl. You keep it secret. You let it burn. You look into the eyes of other girls and see their fires flickering there, offer conspiratorial nods, never speak aloud of a near-unbearable heat, a growing conflagration. You tend the flame because if you don’t you’re stuck, in the cold, on your own, doomed to seasonal layers, doomed to practicality, doomed to this is just the way things are, doomed to settling and understanding and reasoning and agreeing and seeing it another way and seeing it his way and seeing it from all the other ways but your own. And”
― Rachel Yoder, Nightbitch