E.M. Welsh

“A poet is not somebody who has great thoughts. That is the menial duty of the philosopher. A poet is somebody who expresses his thoughts, however commonplace they may be, exquisitely. That is the one and only difference between the poet and everybody else.”
― Mark Forsyth, The Elements of Eloquence: How to Turn the Perfect English Phrase

“The meanest and most hateful thing about money is that it even gives one talent.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky

“It was impossible for me not to notice that the women's movement in Norway during the 1960s and 1970s took a different, more inclusive course from that taken in the United States during the same period. The main goals of feminist leaders here focused on making it possible (and safer) for women to choose not to be mothers, expanding women's access to higher education and jobs and professions that had previously been closed to them, giving women the means to combat sexual harassment and domestic violence, and creating access to political office. Norway's feminists worked on all of these issues but on another vitally important area as well: They demanded legislation that would significantly benefit Norwegian mothers and babies. Paid maternity leave, onsite nursery care in the workplace, flexible schedules for working women, and parental benefits were all part of the legislative advances made in Norway during the 1960s and 1970s. Architects followed suit by designing shopping malls, airports, and other public areas with comfortable, attractive places for nursing women and their children to use.”
― Ina May Gaskin, Ina May's Guide to Breastfeeding: From the Nation's Leading Midwife

“It's not that we haven't had our own activists and friends in the public-health community in the United States working diligently to increase rates of breastfeeding; it's that we have allowed a health-care industry responsible only to corporate boards of directors and stockholders to take the place of what should be a health-care system designed for the benefit of all of our people. A profit-driven health-care industry has no reason to care about increasing breastfeeding rates (or doing anything else to promote health, for that matter), as doing so will do nothing to boost anyone's profits. I consider it a national embarrassment that our Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) has never been able to collect solidly accurate statistics on breastfeeding rates for the first year of our babies' lives through any of its agencies.”
― Ina May Gaskin, Ina May's Guide to Breastfeeding: From the Nation's Leading Midwife