claire

“Male fantasies, male fantasies, is everything run by male fantasies? Up on a pedestal or down on your knees, it's all a male fantasy: that you're strong enough to take what they dish out, or else too weak to do anything about it. Even pretending you aren't catering to male fantasies is a male fantasy: pretending you're unseen, pretending you have a life of your own, that you can wash your feet and comb your hair unconscious of the ever-present watcher peering through the keyhole, peering through the keyhole in your own head, if nowhere else. You are a woman with a man inside watching a woman. You are your own voyeur.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Robber Bride

“Finally I saw that worrying had come to nothing. And gave it up. And took my old body and went out into the morning, and sang.”
― Mary Oliver, Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver

“Humbling women seems to me a chief pastime of poets. As if there can be no story unless we crawl and weep.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“First we only want to be seen, but once we’re seen, that’s not enough anymore. After that, we want to be remembered.”
― Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven