Madeline

“Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer, and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags. It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex.”
― Charlotte Bronte

“When you have never done a thing before and that thing is not simply and clearly right or wrong, you frequently do not know if it is a cruel thing, you just go ahead and do it. Maybe later you'll be able to determine whether you acted cruelly. Too late, of course, but at least you'll know.”
― Russell Banks, The Angel on the Roof

“Lists of books we re-read and books we can't finish tell more about us than about the relative worth of the books themselves”
― Russell Banks

“It was a very American story, somehow. 'Lost.' Each community had such stories. Possibly, each family.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, High Lonesome: Selected Stories, 1966-2006