Madel

“Quella che lei chiama Bologna, è un cosa grande, che va da Parma fino a Cattolica [...] dove davvero la gente vive a Modena, lavora a Bologna e la sera va a ballare a Rimini [...] è una strana metropoli [...] che s'allarga a macchia d'olio tra il mare e gli Appennini.”
― Carlo Lucarelli, Almost Blue

“Sometimes people tell me that something bad happened to me, but I am brave and strong. I don’t want to be told that I am brave or strong. I am not right just because he was wrong. I don’t want to be made noble. I want someone willing to watch me thrash and crumple because that, too, is the truth, and it needs a witness. “He broke me,” I say to a friend. “You’re not broken,” she whispers back. I turn my palms up, wishing I could show her the pieces.”
― Roxane Gay, Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture

“Because of course I feared that i might be overreacting, overemotional, oversensitive, weak, playing victim, crying wolf, blowing things out of proportion, making things up. Because generations of women have heard that they're irrational, melodramatic, neurotic, hysterical, hormonal, psycho, fragile and bossy.

Because girls are coached out of the womb to be nonconfrontational, agreeable, solicitous, deferential, demure, nurturing, to be tuned in to others, and to shrink and shut up.

Because speaking up for myself was not how I learned English. Because I'm fluent in Apology, in Question Mark, in Giggle, in Bowing Down, in Self-Sacrifice.”
― Elissa Bassist, Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture

“Anger is the privilege of the truly broken, and yet, I've never met a woman who was broken enough that she allowed herself to be angry.”
― Lyz Lenz, Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture