Michelle

“Your coat's a little shabby—but who cares? It doesn't keep people from asking you to dine. If I were shabby no one would have me: a woman is asked out as much for her clothes as for herself. The clothes are the background, the frame, if you like: they don't make success, but they are a part of it. Who wants a dingy woman? We are expected to be pretty and well-dressed till we drop—and if we can't keep it up alone, we have to go into partnership.”
― Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth

“For me to heal,
I need you to heal.
For me to trust,
I need you to trust.
For me to be strong,
I need you to be strong.

For me to gain,
I need you to gain.
For me to win,
I need you to win.
For me to rise,
I need you to rise.”
― Matshona Dhliwayo

“Like Gil, Brian had been raised as an only child by strong women. "It shaped our views of ourselves. We considered ourselves loners, on the outside of society," said Jackson. And the two of them often preferred being alone to being around other people.”
― Marcus Baram, Gil Scott-Heron: Pieces of a Man

“Is it due to excess of poetry or of stupidity that we are never weary of describing what King James called a woman's 'makdom and her fairnesse', never weary of listening to the twanging of the old Troubadour strings, and are comparatively uninterested in that other kind of 'makdom and fairnesse' which must be wooed with industrious thought and patient renunciation of small desires? In the story of this passion, too, the development varies: sometimes it is the glorious marriage, sometimes frustration and final parting. And not seldom the catastrophe is bound up with the other passion, sung by the Troubadours.”
― George Eliot, Middlemarch