Alyssa

“In work, it is possible to find commitment, attachment, chemistry, and connection. In fact, it's high time that more people acknowledged the electric pull that women can feel for their profession, the exciting heat of ambition and frisson of success.”
― Rebecca Traister, All the Single Ladies: Unmarried Women and the Rise of an Independent Nation

“..the expectations of Republican Motherhood – in which women’s obligations were the instilling of civic virtue in offspring and the moral maintenance of their husbands.”
― Rebecca Traister, All the Single Ladies: Unmarried Women and the Rise of an Independent Nation

“There is an old question, rarely voiced these days, but nevertheless running as an undercurrent beneath the squabbles and misunderstandings that occur in households, workplaces and universities on a daily basis. ‘What do women want?’ has been asked in a bewildered, almost exasperated, tone since women first began to say they wanted more. Yet the answer seems to us to be simple and entirely self-evident. Women want what all sentient human beings want. They want to develop their own talents and put them to good use, to earn and control their own money so they can be truly independent and make free choices. They want to gain status and respect as they prove to be worth of it. To love and to be loved as free and equal adults, to be allowed their human flaws and foibles and not to be unfairly judged for them, and to be forgiven when they fail, behave badly or have trouble coping. To be the subject and not the object. They want, in short, what men want.”
― Jane Caro

“Denial, I have learned, is not the act of lying to yourself. Denial is not an act, it’s a state. It’s the state of not knowing you are a liar. I was fixated on a certain picture of my life, and that picture was reflected on the surface of everything I saw. We do not choose to be blind, and when we are blind, we don’t know that. We see as much as we can bear to see, and we assume that’s all there is.” - Catherine in We Could Be Beautiful”
― Swan Huntley, We Could Be Beautiful