Stacey

“The first weapon I ever held was my mother’s hand. I”
― Jesmyn Ward, Let Us Descend

“Only when I was young did I believe that it was important to remember what happened in every novel I read. Now I know the truth: what matters is what you experience while reading, the states of feeling that the story evokes, the questions that rise to your mind, rather than the fictional events described. They should teach you this in school, but they don’t. Always instead the emphasis is on what you remembered. Otherwise, how could you write a critique? How could you pass an exam? How could you ever get a degree in literature? I like the novelist who confessed that the only thing to have stayed with him after reading Anna Karenina was the detail of a picnic basket holding a jar of honey. What stayed with me all this time after reading The Years was how it opened, with that first sentence, followed by a description of the weather.”
― Sigrid Nunez, The Vulnerables

“On the shelves, the stalwart anthologies of all those slightly banal stories she found so easy to teach. Genius, she’d learned, didn’t teach as well as mere competence, where the mechanics were all visible on the surface. You couldn’t teach a student how to write by assigning Toni Morrison, it would only create bad imitations. Next to the anthologies were”
― Danzy Senna, Colored Television

“Language gives us an insight into the way women are viewed in a male-dominated society . . . A man is commanding—a woman is demanding. A man is forceful—a woman is pushy. A man is uncompromising—a woman is a ball-breaker. A man is a perfectionist—a woman’s a pain in the ass. He’s assertive—she’s aggressive. He strategizes—she manipulates. He shows leadership—she’s controlling. He’s committed—she’s obsessed. He’s persevering—she’s relentless. He sticks to his guns—she’s stubborn. If a man wants to get it right, he’s looked up to and respected. If a woman wants to get it right, she’s difficult and impossible. If he acts, produces, and directs, he’s called multitalented. If she does the same thing, she’s called vain and egotistical.”
― Barbra Streisand, My Name Is Barbra