Rebecca

“Margaret was not a ready lover, but where she loved she loved passionately, and with no small degree of jealousy.”
― Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South

“There is lust and then there is love. They are related, but still very different things. To indulge in one requires little but honeyed speech and a change of clothes; to obtain the other, by contrast, a man must give up his rib. In return, his woman will undo the sin of Eve, and bring him back into Paradise.”
― Anne Fortier, Juliet

“She laughed out loud, a warm, knowing laughter that made me once again wonder about the secret ingredient in these women’s lives. Whatever it was, I was clearly missing it. It was so much more than just self-confidence; it seemed to be the ability to love oneself, enthusiastically and unsparingly, body and soul, naturally followed by the assumption that every man on the planet is dying to get in on the act.”
― Anne Fortier, Juliet

“It is often women who pay the price for what men want.”
― Roxane Gay, An Untamed State