Karl Orbell

“What I find most troubling is the recent expectation for sudden weight loss after pregnancy. It’s perverse that the finest compliment given to a woman who has just made a person is that she looks like she hasn’t.”
― Sara Pascoe, Animal: The Autobiography of a Female Body

“What strikes me now is why did they send the boys away? Why don’t boys get educated about menstruation? Is it because the teachers think girls will be embarrassed? I feel like the secrecy of it, the action of segregating us, sends the message that we should be ashamed. That our periods are something to hide from the opposite sex.”
― Sara Pascoe, Animal: The Autobiography of a Female Body

“Therefore, have done with this nonsense: you have no ground for hope: dismiss, at once, these hurtful thoughts and foolish wishes from your mind, and turn to your own duty, and the dull blank life that lies before you. You might have known such happiness was not for you.”
― Anne Brontë, Agnes Grey

“My library was -- all libraries are -- a place of ultimate refuge, a wild and sacred space where meanings are manageable precisely because they aren't binding; and where illusion is comfortingly real.”
― André Brink