Women Lose Their Lives Not Knowing They

... Suffering Does Not Ennoble. It Destroys. To Resist Destruction, Self-hatred, Or Lifelong Hopelessness, We Have To Throw Off The Conditioning Of Being Despised, The Fear Of Becoming The They That Is Talked About So Dismissively, To Refuse Lying Myths And Easy Moralities, To See Ourselves As Human, Flawed, And Extraordinary. All Of Us Extraordinary

My Life Has Been Saved Over And Over Again By Picking Up A Book In Which Someone Captured The Whole Experience Of Being Despised And Not Dying.

The Worst Thing In The World Was The Way I Felt When I Wanted Us To Be Like The Families In The Books In The Library, When I Just Wanted Daddy Glen To Love Me Like The Father In Robinson Crusoe. (209)

Every Kid I Meet Who's A Reader Has Got Something Like That, Their Fantasy World. And Science Fiction Is The Best, Especially For Girls Because It's The One Place Where You Can Do The Forbidden.

Beauty Is A Hard Thing. Beauty Is A Mean Story. Beauty Is Slender Girls Who Die Young, Fine-featured Delicate Creatures About Whom Men Write Poems. Beauty, My First Girlfriend Said To Me, Is That Inner Quality Often Associated With Great Amounts Of Leisure Time. And I Loved Her For That.