I finally know the difference between pleasing and loving, obeying and respecting. It has taken me so many years to be okay with being different, and with being this alive, this intense. (xxvi)
I want to read so I can read the Koran read the signs in the street know the number of the bus I’m supposed to take when I one day leave this house.
…to speak of them out loud, to speak of their hunger and pain and loneliness and humour, to make them visible so that can not be ravaged in the dark without great consequence.
I am going to stop mainlining my life force / Into your self-esteem: / Air pump girl blowing up boy rubber ball / You can stay flat and go nowhere by yourself
Women secretly love to talk about their vaginas. They get very excited, mainly because no one has ever asked them before.
If overthrowing some five thousand years of patriarchy seems like a big order, just focus on celebrating each self-respect step along the way
Stop shoving things up me. Stop shoving and stop cleaning it up. My vagina doesn’t need to be cleaned up. It smells good already. Not like rose petals. Don’t try to decorate.
It became a kind of passion. Discovering the key, unlocking the vagina’s mouth, unlocking this voice, this wild song.
Go so far away that you stop being afraid of not coming back.
I have always been obsessed with naming things. If I could name them, I could tame them. They could be my friends.
Three of the ten principles governing the City of Joy are (a) tell the truth, (b) stop waiting to be rescued, and (c) give away what you want the most.
I was worried about my own vagina. It needed a context of other vaginas– a community, a culture of vaginas. There’s so much darkness and secrecy surrounding them– like the Bermunda Triangle.
You will touch this joy and you will suddenly know it is what you were looking for your whole life, but you were afraid to even acknowledge the absence because the hunger for it was so encompassing.
The clitoris is pure in purpose. It is the only organ in the body designed purely for pleasure.
I despise charity. It gives crumbs to a few and silences the others.
After all, the Indo-European word cunt was derived from the goddess Kunda or Cunti, and shares the same root as kin and country.
Well, the tyranny of masculinity and the tyranny of patriarchy I think has been much more deadly to men than it has to women. It hasn’t killed our hearts. It’s killed men’s hearts. It’s silenced them; it’s cut them off.
I wake up every day and I think, ‘I’m breathing! It’s a good day.’