Olivia

“It seemed to me like all my worrying about not being a mother came down to this history - this implication that a woman is not an end in herself. She is a means to a man, who will grow up to be an end in himself, and do something in the world. While a woman is a passageway through which a man might come. I have always felt like an end in myself - doesn't everyone? - but perhaps my doubt that being an end-in-myself is enough comes from this deep lineage of women not being seen as ends, but as passageways through which a man might come. If you refuse to be a passageway, there is something wrong. You must at least try. But I don't want to be a passageway through which a man might come, then manifest himself in the world however he likes, without anyone doubting his right.”
― Sheila Heti, Motherhood

“When I look back at my sexual history - those singular still shots and picture postcards - so little of it involves the actual physical act. Rather the before and after - the buildup to and takeaway from. It's me figuring out what I want and what I'm worth, a long line of cause and effect that started with spinning and ended in electricity.”
― Megan Stielstra, The Wrong Way to Save Your Life: Essays – Intellectually Fierce and Achingly Human Stories on Art, Courage, and Justice

“She doesn't want a baby - but her body doesn't believe her. On some level, no one believes her. On some level, she doesn't even believe herself.”
― Sheila Heti, Motherhood

“I've always engaged with the heart as a metaphor: a desire, a thing to survive, to heal from or shoot for.

Now I know there's nothing more real.

We walk through the world at its leisure. We're here at its mercy and with its blessing.

At some point, we have to ask ourselves how we want to live.”
― Megan Stielstra, The Wrong Way to Save Your Life: Essays – Intellectually Fierce and Achingly Human Stories on Art, Courage, and Justice