Karen

“If the Beast gave me a library like he gave to Belle, I’d marry him too.”
― Aya Ling , The Ugly Stepsister

“A constant factor in human history is the need to protect oneself. Another factor is the urge to attack someone else.”
― Stan Beckensall, Coastal Castles of Northumberland

“One of its (civilisations) most powerful weapons has always been 'barbarity': 'we' know that 'we' are civilised by contrasting ourselves with those we deem to be uncivilised, with those who do not -or cannot be trusted to - share our values. Civilisation is a process of exclusion as well as inclusion. The boundary between 'us' and 'them' may be an internal one (for much of world history the idea of a 'civilised woman' has been a contradiction in terms), or an external one, as the word 'barbarian' suggests; it was originally a derogatory and ethnocentric ancient Greek term for foreigners you could not understand, because they spoke in an incomprehensible babble: 'bar-bar-bar ...' The inconvenient truth, of course, is that so-called 'barbarians' may be no more than those with a different view from ourselves of what it is to be civilised, and of what matters in human culture. In the end, one person's barbarity is another person's civilisation.”
― Mary Beard, How Do We Look / The Eye of Faith

“Humbling women seems to me a chief pastime of poets. As if there can be no story unless we crawl and weep.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe