Amanda’s Reviews > Bright Young Women > Status Update

“I have faith, because nature is the very best example of integration. Things grow differently when they’re damaged, showing us how to occupy strange new ground to bloom red instead of green. We can be found, brighter than before.”

“‘I carry you like my own personal Time Machine, as I put on my lipstick, smile, and head out to the party.’ It’s a line by one of her favorite poets, a woman named Donna Carnes, whose husband went out for sale in San Francisco Bay and has not been seen since. I love it too. How many parties have I gone to over the years, and laughed, and had a good time, while still managing to hold Denise close.”

“what's different is the women on Twitter and Instagram who are so unitedly over this shit they got handcuffs on the Oscar-winning movie producer and a grabby senator out of Congress in the middle of his term. It's a climate that assigns more value to my side of the story too. Not that I responded to any of the interview requests. The risk was still too great that the media might buy and sell my story for parts.”

This book is fucking devastating as a woman I genuinely don’t have the words

“Women got that feeling about him, that funny one we all get when we know something isn't right, but we don't know how to politely extricate ourselves from the situation without escalating the threat of violence or harassment. That is not a skill women are taught, the same way men are not taught that it is okay to leave a woman alone if what she wants is to be left alone.”

“You were there. She got to be with someone she loved at the end of her life. It should’ve been me. But at least it was you.”

“There were men who cracked their knuckles while divulging to me what they would do to The Defendant if they got the chance, thinking this was somehow reassuring for me to hear. But all it did was make me realize that there wasn't so big a difference between the man who'd brutalized Denise and half the men I passed every day on the street.” Sick to my stomach thx