Females Broken Quotes

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Because I wanted you." He turned from the window to face me. "More than I ever wanted anything in my life," he added softly. I continued staring at him, dumbstruck. Whatever I had been expecting, it wasn't this. Seeing my openmouthed expression, he continued lightly. "When I asked my da how ye knew which was the right woman, he told me when the time came, I'd have no doubt. And I didn't. When I woke in the dark under that tree on the road to Leoch, with you sitting on my chest, cursing me for bleeding to death, I said to myself, 'Jamie Fraser, for all ye canna see what she looks like, and for all she weighs as much as a good draft horse, this is the woman'" I started toward him, and he backed away, talking rapidly. "I said to myself, 'She's mended ye twice in as many hours, me lad; life amongst the MacKenzies being what it is, it might be as well to wed a woman as can stanch a wound and set broken bones.' And I said to myself, 'Jamie, lad, if her touch feels so bonny on your collarbone, imagine what it might feel like lower down...'" He dodged around a chair. "Of course, I thought it might ha' just been the effects of spending four months in a monastery, without benefit of female companionship, but then that ride through the dark together"--he paused to sigh theatrically, neatly evading my grab at his sleeve--"with that lovely broad arse wedged between my thighs"--he ducked a blow aimed at his left ear and sidestepped, getting a low table between us--"and that rock-solid head thumping me in the chest"--a small metal ornament bounced off his own head and went clanging to the floor--"I said to myself..." He was laughing so hard at this point that he had to gasp for breath between phrases. "Jamie...I said...for all she's a Sassenach bitch...with a tongue like an adder's ...with a bum like that...what does it matter if she's a f-face like a sh-sh-eep?" I tripped him neatly and landed on his stomach with both knees as he hit the floor with a crash that shook the house. "You mean to tell me that you married me out of love?" I demanded. He raised his eyebrows, struggling to draw in breath. "Have I not...just been...saying so?
Diana Gabaldon (Outlander (Outlander, #1))
You are so young, Lyra, too young to understand this, but I shall tell you anyway and you'll understand it later: men pass in front of our eyes like butterflies, creatures of a brief season. We love them; they are brave, proud, beautiful, clever; and they die almost at once. They die so soon that our hearts are continually racked with pain. We bear their children, who are witches if they are female, human if not; and then in the blink of an eye they are gone, felled, slain, lost. Our sons, too. When a little boy is growing, he thinks he is immortal. His mother knows he isn't. Each time becomes more painful, until finally your heart is broken. Perhaps that is when Yambe-Akka comes for you. She is older than the tundra. Perhaps, for her, witches' lives are as brief as men's are to us.
Philip Pullman (The Golden Compass (His Dark Materials, #1))
I don't think a female running a house is a problem, a broken family. It's perceived as one because of the notion that a head is a man.
Toni Morrison
One of the most pusillanimous things we of the female sex have done throughout the centuries is to have allowed the male sex to assume that mankind is masculine. It is not. It takes both male and female to make the image of God. The proper understanding of mankind is that it is only a poor, broken thing if either male or female is excluded.
Madeleine L'Engle (The Irrational Season (Crosswicks Journals, #3))
Dad has always said that a man who raises a hand against a female lowers himself beneath her feet.
Erin Watt (Broken Prince (The Royals, #2))
Broken people are the most dangerous...because they just don't give a fuck
Ashley Jade (Blame It on the Shame (Blame It on the Shame, #2))
You only fix something, when it’s broken. And you - are far from broken.
Abhijit Naskar (The Bengal Tigress: A Treatise on Gender Equality (Humanism Series))
Strength is taking charge of your own destiny and not waiting on others to do so. You don’t have to swear and drink and beat people up and slay monsters. You’re allowed to cry and take care of children and cook and get your heart broken and dress up and date and get pregnant. But when decisions have to be made, a strong character makes them and doesn’t wait for someone else.
Mur Lafferty
It’s two broken people coming together to follow God’s calling on their lives.
John Mark Comer (Loveology: God. Love. Marriage. Sex. And the Never-Ending Story of Male and Female.)
This is how it feels to be in this broken female body. This is how it feels to be alone... This is how it feels to be me. I dare you to look...and once you look, I’m going to make sure you cannot look away.
Frida Kahlo
I think we need a little more rallying around the dumpee. If you were a woman and I’d told you that the third guy in eighteen months had broken up with me, right now we’d be drinking lemon drop martinis and giving each other female empowerment pep talks about how we don’t need a man in our lives to feel complete. And then we’d watch The Notebook and drool over Ryan Gosling.” “Sorry, babe. But when they handed out best friends you drew the straw with a penis attached. That means no Ryan Gosling.
Julie James (Love Irresistibly (FBI/US Attorney, #4))
I won’t lose hope. I won’t be broken.
Rachel L. Schade (Forsaken Kingdom (Silent Kingdom, #2))
This is what I saw, in the reflections of the tomb." She whispered it almost to herself, broken-voiced. "It's what the goddess dreamed, but I thought I could prevent it. I thought you would choose the world over yourself." "I'm far too selfish for that," Lore whispered.
Hannah F. Whitten (The Foxglove King (The Nightshade Crown, #1))
I think of all that is happening elsewhere, as I lie here. Nearby, I can hear the sounds of a road crew. Somewhere else, monkeys chatter in trees. A male seahorse becomes pregnant. A diamond forms, a bee dances out directions, a windshield shatters. Somewhere a mother spreads peanut butter for her son's lunch, a lover sighs, a knitter binds off the edge of a sleeve. Clouds gather to make rain, corn ripens on the stalk, a cancer cell divides, a little league team scores. Somewhere blossoms open, a man pushes a knife in deeper, a painter darkens her blue. A cashier pours new dimes into an outstretched hand, rainbows form and fade, plates in the earth shift and settle. A woman opens a velvet box, male spiders pluck gently on the females' webs, falcons fall from the sky. Abstracts are real and time is a lie, it cannot be measured when one moment can expand to hold everything. You can want to live and end up choosing death; and you can want to die and end up living. What keeps us here, really? A thread that breaks in a breeze. And yet a thread that cannot be broken
Elizabeth Berg (Never Change)
Listen my dear sister! You only fix something, when it’s broken. And you - are far from broken. Say to yourself, I am perfect, the way I am. Say to yourself, I am beautiful the way I am. Say to yourself, those who do not accept me the way I am, do not deserve me in their life.
Abhijit Naskar (The Bengal Tigress: A Treatise on Gender Equality (Humanism Series))
I sang from my belly, from my intricate system of female parts, and from those sacs inside me that wouldn't show up on an ultrasound but held all the rocks and stones and broken glass of want and need I'd managed to collect in seventeen years.
Nina Malkin (Swoon (Swoon, #1))
Say to these kind and gentle females, that a heart-broken and failing man returns them his thanks. Tell them, that the Being we all worship, under different names, will be mindful of their charity; and that the time shall not be distant when we may assemble around His throne without distinction of sex, or rank, or color." The
James Fenimore Cooper (The Last of the Mohicans; A narrative of 1757)
The more legal and material hindrances women have broken through, the more strictly and heavily and cruelly images of female beauty have come to weigh upon us.
Naomi Wolf (The Beauty Myth)
Although previous studies had suggested that friendship--male and female--could be a powerful antidote to stress, more recent research indicates that broken promises, dashed expectations, and other side effects of friendship gone wrong can actually raise the level of stress in our lives, often to disastrous effect.
Susan Shapiro Barash (Tripping the Prom Queen: The Truth About Women and Rivalry)
I read things that male relationship experts write about women and I read things that female relationship experts write about men, then I feel a true sadness in my heart. Why can’t there be a simple, pure, direct openness? Why can’t there be a simple, real, open trust? The truth is that male or female, gay or straight— we are all people— we have all been broken and put back together in so many different ways... it’s really just about learning how to recognize the sound of the other one's cracks. And that’s what it’s really about, just that.
C. JoyBell C.
The more legal and material hindrances women have broken through, the more strictly and heavily and cruelly images of female beauty have come to weigh upon us...During the past decade, women breached the power structure; meanwhile, eating disorders rose exponentially and cosmetic surgery became the fastest-growing specialty...pornography became the main media category, ahead of legitimate films and records combined, and thirty-three thousand American women told researchers that they would rather lose ten to fifteen pounds than achieve any other goal...More women have more money and power and scope and legal recognition than we have ever had before; but in terms of how we feel about ourselves physically, we may actually be worse off than our unliberated grandmothers.
Naomi Wolf
There are few things as tragic as when we tacitly agree to the notion that our unchangeable truth is somehow invalid. Less than. Broken. Wrong. That pretending is necessary for professional opportunity or personal acceptance. I’ve done it a million times in ways large and small, and I can tell you this: trying to hide in plain sight is frustrating, disorienting, isolating—an exhausting game of (only possible) short-term gains in exchange for very-certain long-term exclusion. When we agree to play, we not only hide and cast doubt upon our experiences. We’ve willingly participated in the invalidation of ourselves.
Jennifer O'Toole (Autism in Heels: The Untold Story of a Female Life on the Spectrum)
Then they’re fools. Women are some of the most vicious fighters I’ve ever seen and can be just as capable as any man.” “Makes sense. In nature, the female is likely to be the meaner one of the species, especially when it comes to the young,” Shea said.
T.A. White (Pathfinder's Way (The Broken Lands, #1))
We were kept pure for men, and then broken in by them. And what happened to us in the meantime was completely irrelevant in the pursuit of their pleasure, or their integrity, their masculinity. Were females really valued so little? Would my own daughters face the same fate?
Hibo Wardere (Cut: One Woman's Fight Against FGM in Britain Today)
He goes out to untie the female from the tree where he left her. She hasn’t taken the rope off her neck. Of course, he thinks, she doesn’t know she can. He moves toward her and she begins to tremble. She looks at the ground. Urinates. He takes her to the barn and ties her to the door of a broken and rusted truck.
Agustina Bazterrica (Tender Is the Flesh)
Society remains uneasy with female strength of any stripe and still prefers and champions delicate damsels—an outdated sentiment that limits all women. But because the damsel’s face is still viewed as unequivocally white and female, it is a particular problem for black women. As long as vulnerability and softness are the basis for acceptable femininity (and acceptable femininity is a requirement for a woman’s life to have value), women who are perpetually framed because of their race as supernaturally indestructible will not be viewed with regard. This may be why we so rarely see the black women who are victims of violence on true-crime television, despite the fact that black women are more likely to be victims of sexual violence and domestic homicidal violence.
Tamara Winfrey Harris (The Sisters Are Alright: Changing the Broken Narrative of Black Women in America)
There are some that even beg for the Chamber," she could hear Isaar saying in the back of her mind. "Soft minded fools or broken souls that would rather live a fabricated existence than deal with reality.
Charles Hash (Nascent Decay (The Goddess of Decay Book 1))
People spoke to foreigners with an averted gaze, and everybody seemed to know somebody who had just vanished. The rumors of what had happened to them were fantastic and bizarre though, as it turned out, they were only an understatement of the real thing. Before going to see General Videla […], I went to […] check in with Los Madres: the black-draped mothers who paraded, every week, with pictures of their missing loved ones in the Plaza Mayo. (‘Todo mi familia!’ as one elderly lady kept telling me imploringly, as she flourished their photographs. ‘Todo mi familia!’) From these and from other relatives and friends I got a line of questioning to put to the general. I would be told by him, they forewarned me, that people ‘disappeared’ all the time, either because of traffic accidents and family quarrels or, in the dire civil-war circumstances of Argentina, because of the wish to drop out of a gang and the need to avoid one’s former associates. But this was a cover story. Most of those who disappeared were openly taken away in the unmarked Ford Falcon cars of the Buenos Aires military police. I should inquire of the general what precisely had happened to Claudia Inez Grumberg, a paraplegic who was unable to move on her own but who had last been seen in the hands of his ever-vigilant armed forces [….] I possess a picture of the encounter that still makes me want to spew: there stands the killer and torturer and rape-profiteer, as if to illustrate some seminar on the banality of evil. Bony-thin and mediocre in appearance, with a scrubby moustache, he looks for all the world like a cretin impersonating a toothbrush. I am gripping his hand in a much too unctuous manner and smiling as if genuinely delighted at the introduction. Aching to expunge this humiliation, I waited while he went almost pedantically through the predicted script, waving away the rumored but doubtless regrettable dematerializations that were said to be afflicting his fellow Argentines. And then I asked him about Senorita Grumberg. He replied that if what I had said was true, then I should remember that ‘terrorism is not just killing with a bomb, but activating ideas. Maybe that’s why she’s detained.’ I expressed astonishment at this reply and, evidently thinking that I hadn’t understood him the first time, Videla enlarged on the theme. ‘We consider it a great crime to work against the Western and Christian style of life: it is not just the bomber but the ideologist who is the danger.’ Behind him, I could see one or two of his brighter staff officers looking at me with stark hostility as they realized that the general—El Presidente—had made a mistake by speaking so candidly. […] In response to a follow-up question, Videla crassly denied—‘rotondamente’: ‘roundly’ denied—holding Jacobo Timerman ‘as either a journalist or a Jew.’ While we were having this surreal exchange, here is what Timerman was being told by his taunting tormentors: Argentina has three main enemies: Karl Marx, because he tried to destroy the Christian concept of society; Sigmund Freud, because he tried to destroy the Christian concept of the family; and Albert Einstein, because he tried to destroy the Christian concept of time and space. […] We later discovered what happened to the majority of those who had been held and tortured in the secret prisons of the regime. According to a Navy captain named Adolfo Scilingo, who published a book of confessions, these broken victims were often destroyed as ‘evidence’ by being flown out way over the wastes of the South Atlantic and flung from airplanes into the freezing water below. Imagine the fun element when there’s the surprise bonus of a Jewish female prisoner in a wheelchair to be disposed of… we slide open the door and get ready to roll her and then it’s one, two, three… go!
Christopher Hitchens (Hitch 22: A Memoir)
Now what was left of the ships of the retreating army would be disappearing over the thin line where the sea met the sky; now the smoke of last night's fires was clearing where the still-alive humans below had buried and burnt their dead. They were mostly the female kind. The female kind did the sorting-out afterwards. They worked their way through the rubble and the debris. Hunched and wingless, they wheeled their broken-yoked handcarts along what was left of the roads. It was nothing new. The crow had seen it all before.
Ali Smith (The Story of Antigone)
He will lift up the limp bodies of the rabbits and show me how he caught them square between the eyes, and the bright bodies of male and female pheasants with shot in the breast and their necks hanging broken and their eyes half open in the voluptuous death he loves. He will be a knife leaning above me as he kisses me.
Meridel Le Sueur (Harvest)
Some would argue that aggressive displays of sexuality by black female performers such as Nicki Minaj and Beyonce are empowering precisely because of historical perceptions of female sexuality and black women's sexuality in America. The idea that women cannot be overt about their sexuality is rooted in sexist notions of female purity. The idea that black women must prove their worth and disprove centuries of propaganda against their sexuality is buying into racism and sexism and making the oppressed responsible for adapting to oppression - instead of demanding that society stop treating women's sexual desires differently from those of men.
Tamara Winfrey Harris (The Sisters Are Alright: Changing the Broken Narrative of Black Women in America)
I'm sorry, I don't understand. Could you tell me more about this 'profanity'?" Mrs. Miller nodded at my dictionary. "I'll assume you don't need a definition. Perhaps you'd prefer an example?" "That would be so helpful, thank you very much." Without missing a beat, Mrs. Miller rattled off a stream of obscenities so fully and completely unexpected that I fell off my chair. Mothers were defiled, their male and female children, as well as any and all offspring who just happened to be born out of wedlock. AS for the sacred union that produced these innocent babes, the pertinent bodily appendages were catalogued by a list of names so profoundly scurrilous that a grizzled marine, conceived in a brothel and dying of a disease he contracted in one, would've wished he'd been born as smooth as a Ken doll. The act itself was invoked with such a verity of incestuous, scatological, bestial, and just plain bizarre variations that that same marine would've given up on the Ken doll fantasy, and wished instead that all life had been confined to a single-cell stage, forever free of taint of mitosis, let alone procreation. Somewhere during the course of all this I noticed I'd snapped my pencil in half, and now I used the two ends to gouge out my brain. "Guhhhhhh guhhhhh guhhhhhh guhhhhh guhhhhh," I said, by which I meant: "You have shattered whatever tattered remnants of pedagogical propriety I still possessed, and my tender young mind has broken beneath the strain." Nervously, I climbed back into my chair, the two halves of my pencil sticking out of ears like an arrow that had shot clean through my head. Mrs. Miller allowed herself a small self-congratulatory smile.
Dale Peck (Sprout)
When I stopped viewing girls as potential girlfriends and started treating them as sisters in Christ, I discovered the richness of true friendship. When I stopped worrying about who I was going to marry and began to trust God’s timing, I uncovered the incredible potential of serving God as a single. . . . I believe the time has come for Christians, male and female, to own up to the mess we’ve left behind in our selfish pursuit of short-term romance. Dating may seem an innocent game, but as I see it, we are sinning against each other. What excuse will we have when God asks us to account for our actions and attitudes in relationships? If God sees a sparrow fall (Matthew 10:29), do you think He could possibly overlook the broken hearts and scarred emotions we cause in relationships based on selfishness? Everyone around us may be playing the dating game. But at the end of our lives, we won’t answer to everyone. We’ll answer to God. . . . Long before Seventeen magazine ever gave teenagers tips on dating, people did things very differently. At the turn of the twentieth century, a guy and girl became romantically involved only if they planned to marry. If a young man spent time at a girl’s home, family and friends assumed that he intended to propose to her. But shifting attitudes in culture and the arrival of the automobile brought radical changes. The new “rules” allowed people to indulge in all the thrills of romantic love without having any intention of marriage. Author Beth Bailey documents these changes in a book whose title, From Front Porch to Backseat, says everything about the difference in society’s attitude when dating became the norm. Love and romance became things people could enjoy solely for their recreational value. Though much has changed since the 1920s, the tendency of dating relationships to move toward intimacy without commitment remains very much the same. . . . Many of the attitudes and practices of today’s dating relationships conflict with the lifestyle of smart love God wants us to live.
Joshua Harris
Boats are female for Walter, as are busted car engines and broken lamps and radios – items of any kind that can be fiddled with by men adroit with gadgetry, and restored to a condition as good as new. Why do I find this reassuring? Perhaps I believe, in some childish, faith-filled corner of myself, that Walter might yet take out his pliers and his ratchet set and do the same for me.
Margaret Atwood (The Blind Assassin)
Privilege, in this moral framework, isn’t something you experience as an individual. It is wholly associated with group identity. If you are a white male, you are, by definition, privileged. This is true regardless of your history or circumstances. If you were raised in a broken home, in a neighborhood rife with drug addiction, poverty, and violence, you are still privileged. Likewise, if you are a “person of color” or a female, or a “sexual minority” and were raised in an intact family, born into wealth, with all the benefits the best education can afford, you are still a victim. Bear in mind that privilege is indeed real. Some people do have more privilege than others, however the line of privilege should never be drawn exclusively on the basis of skin color.
Scott David Allen (Why Social Justice Is Not Biblical Justice: An Urgent Appeal to Fellow Christians in a Time of Social Crisis)
Unlike in SeaWorld, there is no known instance of mother-son mating in wild orca communities. In SeaWorld Orlando, Katina mated with her son Taku, resulting in the female calf Nalani. Kohana was bred with her uncle Keto twice. This is an instance of what appears to be a taboo—strictly reinforced in the wild by generations of matriarchs—that has broken down in the confines of captivity.
John Hargrove (Beneath the Surface: Killer Whales, SeaWorld, and the Truth Beyond Blackfish)
him to turn out and find a dry twig; and if he can't do it, go and borrow one. In fact, the Leather Stocking Series ought to have been called the Broken Twig Series. I am sorry there is not room to put in a few dozen instances of the delicate art of the forest, as practised by Natty Bumppo and some of the other Cooperian experts. Perhaps we may venture two or three samples. Cooper was a sailor — a naval officer; yet he gravely tells us how a vessel, driving towards a lee shore in a gale, is steered for a particular spot by her skipper because he knows of an undertow there which will hold her back against the gale and save her. For just pure woodcraft, or sailorcraft, or whatever it is, isn't that neat? For several years Cooper was daily in the society of artillery, and he ought to have noticed that when a cannon-ball strikes the ground it either buries itself or skips a hundred feet or so; skips again a hundred feet or so — and so on, till finally it gets tired and rolls. Now in one place he loses some "females" — as he always calls women — in the edge of a wood near a plain at night in a fog, on purpose to give Bumppo a chance to show off the delicate art of the forest before the
Mark Twain (Mark Twain: Collection of 51 Classic Works with analysis and historical background (Annotated and Illustrated) (Annotated Classics))
She is a Weyward. And she carries another Weyward inside her. She gathers herself together, every cell blazing, and thinks: Now. The window breaks, a waterfall of sharp sounds. The room grows dark with feathered bodies, shooting through the broken window, the fireplace. Beaks, claws, and eyes flashing. Feathers brushing her skin. Simon yells, his hand loosening on her throat. She sucks in the air, falling to her knees, one hand cradling her stomach. Something touches her foot, and she sees a dark tide of spiders spreading across the floor. Birds continue to stream through the window. Insects, too: the azure flicker of damselflies, moths with orange eyes on their wings. Tiny, gossamer mayflies. Bees in a ferocious golden swarm. She feels something sharp on her shoulder, its claws digging into her flesh. She looks up at blue-black feathers, streaked with white. A crow. The same crow that has watched over her since she arrived. Tears fill her eyes, and she knows in that moment that she is not alone in the cottage. Altha is there, in the spiders that dance across the floor. Violet is there, in the mayflies that glisten and undulate like some great silver snake. And all the other Weyward women, from the first of the line, are there, too. They have always been with her, and always will be.
Emilia Hart (Weyward)
I’ve taken a sudden notion to appreciate mature females,” Deene was saying. “Though if her brothers ask, I’m being protective in their absence. Hold my drink.” And that, the simple fact of Deene’s unthinking response to a gorgeous woman, saved Hazlit from making a similar fool of himself. He supposed he’d make a little different fool of himself later in the evening, after Maggie had had her fun and left a trail of broken hearts all over the room. When
Grace Burrowes (Lady Maggie's Secret Scandal (The Duke's Daughters, #2; Windham, #5))
Woman lost (skin deep) like a damn fine thread in the fire Woman of the world caught up in your black machinations I was a woman who cried alone at night, who gave it all away when she saw the good heart of the man inside Woman caught standing up; her open parts are broken - Someone's armour broke right through, it was you, you For some reason I've been thinking about you, your light Today, you poured out all the tension, the ego underground Hibernating inside my heart. I was so close to it, to the flicker Of love in a lonely street and I turned my head and walked Away from the flame in your arms. As I put away the fun in A house of fight I came across you and a mechanism in My brain shifted chemically, walls caved in like the cadence In your words and I was lost in the darkness. Even now in Middle age I remember when desire was a popular drug And everyone was selling it but I don't live to explore to be Able to illuminate the proof of my existence, live to burn Vicariously though the diamond mouth of sleeping stars. From so much love, pictures of death arrived in black and White photographs and you're perfect, you always were - Illusions have no flaws; they're dangerous beings, smoke. Could I take the moon back and still live with my great Expectations of nostalgia, laughter, tears and suffering - But they are all a part of me not the people of the stars, Long dead videotape, the past has stained the symphony Of my soul (like the wind through the trees) throughout Me finding myself, my two left feet as a female poet The warning was there of the noise of eternity, signs That said, don't anger the sea, you have an ally in her. When men grow cold listen to their stories and bask in The glory of their genuine deaths, their winters, put Them away so you can read them like the newspaper. Once in a while you can go back to where you stood In youth with your afternoon tea, the sun of God in our Eyes - I am that kind of woman who lives in the past
Abigail George (Feeding The Beasts)
But I'm not your man." When I heard this fool tell me that...1st emotion 'this bold mutha %#&@$ a'...2nd emotion 'but I don't even want you to be'...3rd emotion 'imma let him know that I will not be talked to like that' So, I did exactly what my gut had been telling me to do the past two weeks and I boldly returned the comment with..."this is over.""Without a doubt, I believe that anyone reading this gem of microscopic insight into the heart of broken women will end up with a brand new perspective of themselves and others.
Melissa McAllister ("But I'm Not Your Man": A Reality Self Check for Single Females)
Traditional feminism would tell you that we should concentrate on the big stuff like pay inequality, female circumcision in the Third World, and domestic abuse. And they are, obviously, pressing and disgusting and wrong, and the world cannot look itself squarely in the eye until they're stopped. But all those littler, stupider, more obvious day-to-day problems with being a woman are, in many ways, just as deleterious to women's peace of mind. It is the "Broken Windows" philosophy, transferred to female inequality. In the Broken Windows theory, if a single broken window on an empty building is ignored and not repaired, the tendency is for vandals to break a few more windows. Eventually, they may break into the building and light fires, or become squatters. Similarly, if we live in a climate where female pubic hair is considered distasteful, or famous and powerful women are constantly pilloried for being too fat or too thin, or badly dressed, then, eventually, people start breaking into women, and lighting fires in them. Women will get squatters. Clearly, this is not a welcome state of affairs.
Caitlin Moran (How to Be a Woman)
Samuel had a great black book on an available shelf and it had gold letters on the cover—Dr. Gunn’s Family Medicine. Some pages were bent and beat up from use, and others were never opened to the light. To look through Dr. Gunn is to know the Hamiltons’ medical history. These are the used sections—broken bones, cuts, bruises, mumps, measles, backache, scarlet fever, diphtheria, rheumatism, female complaints, hernia, and of course everything to do with pregnancy and the birth of children. The Hamiltons must have been either lucky or moral for the sections on gonorrhea and syphilis were never opened.
John Steinbeck (East of Eden)
It is not, I think, surprising that a man when he wants sympathy in such a calamity as that which had now befallen Phineas Finn, should seek it from a woman. Women sympathise most effectually with men, as men do with women. But it is, perhaps, a little odd that a man when he wants consolation because his heart has been broken, always likes to receive it from a pretty woman. One would be disposed to think that at such a moment he would be profoundly indifferent to such a matter, that no delight could come to him from female beauty, and that all he would want would be the softness of a simply sympathetic soul.
Anthony Trollope (Complete Works of Anthony Trollope)
Context is everything in both narrative and real life, and while the accusation is never that these creators deliberately set out to discriminate against gay and female characters, the unavoidable implication is that they should have known better than to add to the sum total of those stories which, en masse, do exactly that. And if the listmakers can identify the trend so thoroughly – if, despite all the individual qualifications, protests and contextualisations of the authors, these problems can still be said to exist – then the onus, however disconnected from the work of any one individual, nonetheless falls to those individuals, in their role as cultural creators, to acknowledge the problem; to do better next time; perhaps even to apologise. This last is a particular sticking point. By and large, human beings tend not to volunteer apologies for things they perceive to be the fault of other people, for the simple reason that apology connotes guilt, and how can we feel guilty – or rather, why should we – if we’re not the ones at fault? But while we might argue over who broke a vase, the vase itself is still broken, and will remain so, its shards ground into the carpet, until someone decides to clean it up. Blog Post: Love Team Freezer
Foz Meadows
Nova Berry looked like a hickory switch- tall, thin and knobby. She could trace her family line back hundreds of years in the Appalachian Mountains. These days people treated what she did as a novelty, but there was a time when the Berry women were known far and wider their natural remedies.Slippery elm for digestive problems. Red clover for skin conditions. Pot marigold for certain monthly female ailments. Nova had been forced to spice things up a bit now that there were things like Maalox and Midol on the market, so easily acquired. So she made it known that her cure for heartburn also mended a broken heart, and her cure for cramps also made you more fertile, or less, if that's what you wanted. Half the time it really worked, because if it was one thing generations of Berry women knew, it was that confidence was the primary ingredient in every potion.
Sarah Addison Allen (The Sugar Queen)
The qualities that a given period calls beautiful in women are merely symbols of the female behavior that that period considers desirable: The beauty myth is always actually prescribing behavior and not appearance. Competition between women has been made part of the myth so that women will be divided from one another. Youth and (until recently) virginity have been “beautiful” in women since they stand for experiential and sexual ignorance. Aging in women is “unbeautiful” since women grow more powerful with time, and since the links between generations of women must always be newly broken: Older women fear young ones, young women fear old, and the beauty myth truncates for all the female life span. Most urgently, women’s identity must be premised upon our “beauty” so that we will remain vulnerable to outside approval, carrying the vital sensitive organ of self-esteem
Naomi Wolf (The Beauty Myth)
I have brought the heather-mixture suit, as the climatic conditions are congenial. To-morrow, if not prevented, I will endeavour to add the brown lounge with the faint green twill.' 'It can't go on - this sort of thing - Jeeves.' 'We must hope for the best, sir.' 'Can't you think of anything to do?' 'I have been giving the matter considerable thought, sir, but so far without success. I am placing three silk shirts - the dove-coloured, the light blue, and the mauve - in the first long drawer, sir.' 'You don't mean to say you can't think of anything, Jeeves?' 'For the moment, sir, no. You will find a dozen handkerchiefs and the tan socks in the upper drawer on the left.' He strapped the suit-case and put it on a chair. 'A curious lady, Miss Rockmetteller, sir.' 'You understate it, Jeeves.' He gazed meditatively out of the window. 'In many ways, sir, Miss Rockmetteller reminds me of an aunt of mine who resides in the south-east portion of London. Their temperaments are much alike. My aunt has the same taste for the pleasures of the great city. It is a passion with her to ride in taxi-cabs, sir. Whenever the family take their eyes off her she escapes from the house and spends the day riding about in cabs. On several occasions she has broken into the children's savings bank to secure the means to enable her to gratify this desire.' 'I love to have these little chats with you about your female relatives, Jeeves,' I said coldly, for I felt that the man had let me down, and I was fed up with him. 'But I don't see what all this has got to do with my trouble.' 'I beg your pardon, sir. I am leaving a small assortment of our neckties on the mantelpiece, sir for you to select according to your preference. I should recommend the blue with the red domino pattern, sir.
P.G. Wodehouse
The important parts of my story, I was realizing, lay less in the surface value of my accomplishments and more in what undergirded them—the many small ways I’d been buttressed over the years, and the people who’d helped build my confidence over time. I remembered them all, every person who’d ever waved me forward, doing his or her best to inoculate me against the slights and indignities I was certain to encounter in the places I was headed—all those environments built primarily for and by people who were neither black nor female. I thought of my great-aunt Robbie and her exacting piano standards, how she’d taught me to lift my chin and play my heart out on a baby grand even if all I’d ever known was an upright with broken keys. I thought of my father, who showed me how to box and throw a football, same as Craig. There were Mr. Martinez and Mr. Bennett, my teachers at Bryn Mawr, who never dismissed my opinions. There was my mom, my staunchest support, whose vigilance had saved me from languishing in a dreary second-grade classroom. At Princeton, I’d had Czerny Brasuell, who encouraged me and fed my intellect in new ways. And as a young professional, I’d had, among others, Susan Sher and Valerie Jarrett—still good friends and colleagues many years later—who showed me what it looked like to be a working mother and consistently opened doors for me, certain I had something to offer. These were people who mostly didn’t know one another and would never have occasion to meet, many of whom I’d fallen out of touch with myself. But for me, they formed a meaningful constellation. These were my boosters, my believers, my own personal gospel choir, singing, Yes, kid, you got this! all the way through. I’d never forgotten it. I’d tried, even as a junior lawyer, to pay it forward, encouraging curiosity when I saw it, drawing younger people into important conversations.
Michelle Obama (Becoming)
A few days later, from a wall along the river, Martha Gellhorn watched the Soviet troops move on. ‘The army came in like a flood; it had no special form, there were no orders given. It came and rolled over the stone quays and out onto the roads like water rising, like ants, like locusts. What was moving along there was not so much an army, but a whole world.’ Many of the soldiers were wearing medals from the Battle of Stalingrad, and the entire group had fought its way at least 4,000 kilometres to the west in the last few years, most of it on foot. The trucks were kept rolling with impromptu repairs, the countless female soldiers looked like professional boxers, the sway-backed horses were driven along as though by Ben Hur himself, there seemed to be neither order nor plan, but according to Gellhorn it was impossible ‘to describe the sense of power radiating from this chaos of soldiers and broken-down equipment’. And she thought how sorry the Germans must be that they had ever started a war with the Russians.
Geert Mak (In Europe: Travels Through the Twentieth Century)
We think of men as antiheroes, as capable of occupying an intense and fascinating moral grey area; of being able to fall, and rise, and fall again, but still be worthy of love on some fundamental level, because if it was the world and its failings that broke them, then we surely must owe them some sympathy. But women aren’t allowed to be broken by the world; or if we are, it’s the breaking that makes us villains. Wronged women turn into avenging furies, inhuman and monstrous: once we cross to the dark side, we become adversaries to be defeated, not lost souls in need of mending. Which is what happens, when you let benevolent sexism invest you in the idea that women are humanity’s moral guardians and men its native renegades: because if female goodness is only ever an inherent quality – something we’re born both with and to be – then once lost, it must necessarily be lost forever, a severed limb we can’t regrow. Whereas male goodness, by virtue of being an acquired quality – something bestowed through the kindness of women, earned through right action or learned through struggle – can just as necessarily be gained and lost multiple times without being tarnished, like a jewel we might pawn in hardship, and later reclaim.
Foz Meadows
That man,” she announced huffily, referring to their host, “can’t put two words together without losing his meaning!” Obviously she’d expected better of the quality during the time she was allowed to mix with them. “He’s afraid of us, I think,” Elizabeth replied, climbing out of bed. “Do you know the time? He desired me to accompany him fishing this morning at seven.” “Half past ten,” Berta replied, opening drawers and turning toward Elizabeth for her decision as to which gown to wear. “He waited until a few minutes ago, then went of without you. He was carrying two poles. Said you could join him when you arose.” “In that case, I think I’ll wear the pink muslin,” she decided with a mischievous smile. The Earl of Marchman could scarcely believe his eyes when he finally saw his intended making her way toward him. Decked out in a frothy pink gown with an equally frothy pink parasol and a delicate pink bonnet, she came tripping across the bank. Amazed at the vagaries of the female mind, he quickly turned his attention back to the grandfather trout he’d been trying to catch for five years. Ever so gently he jiggled his pole, trying to entice or else annoy the wily old fish into taking his fly. The giant fish swam around his hook as if he knew it might be a trick and then he suddenly charged it, nearly jerking the pole out of John’s hands. The fish hurtled out of the water, breaking the surface in a tremendous, thrilling arch at the same moment John’s intended bride deliberately chose to let out a piercing shriek: “Snake!” Startled, John jerked his head in her direction and saw her charging at him as if Lucifer himself was on her heels, screaming, “Snake! Snake! Snnnaaaake!” And in that instant his connection was broken; he let his line go slack, and the fish dislodged the hook, exactly as Elizabeth had hoped. “I saw a snake,” she lied, panting and stopping just short of the arms he’d stretched out to catch her-or strangle her, Elizabeth thought, smothering a smile. She stole a quick searching glance at the water, hoping for a glimpse of the magnificent trout he’d nearly caught, her hands itching to hold the pole and try her own luck. Lord Marchman’s disgruntled question snapped her attention back to him. “Would you like to fish, or would you rather sit and watch for a bit, until you recover from your flight from the serpent?” Elizabeth looked around in feigned shock. “Goodness, sir, I don’t fish!” “Do you sit?” he asked with what might have been sarcasm. Elizabeth lowered her lashes to hide her smile at the mounting impatience in his voice. “Of course I sit,” she proudly told him. “Sitting is an excessively ladylike occupation, but fishing, in my opinion, is not. I shall adore watching you do it, however.” For the next two hours she sat on the boulder beside him, complaining about its hardness, the brightness of the sun and the dampness of the air, and when she ran out of matters to complain about she proceeded to completely spoil his morning by chattering his ears off about every inane topic she could think of while occasionally tossing rocks into the stream to scare off his fish.
Judith McNaught (Almost Heaven (Sequels, #3))
But the psychological change accompanying these technologies is more subtle, and perhaps more important. Consciously and unconsciously, we have gradually grown accustomed to experiencing the world through disembodied machines and instruments. As I stood in line to board an airplane recently, the young woman in front of me was primping in her mirror—straightening her hair, putting on lipstick, patting her checks with blush—a female ritual that has been repeated for several thousand years. In this case, however, her “mirror” was an iPhone in video mode, pointed at herself, and she was reacting to a digitized image of herself. I take walks in a federally protected wildlife preserve near my home in Massachusetts. A dirt trail winds for a mile around a lake teeming with beavers and fish, wild ducks and geese, aquatic frogs. Bulrushes and cattails wrap the perimeter of the pond, water lilies float here and there, rippling when a fish goes by. In the winter, the air is crisp and sharp, in the summer soft and aromatic. And a thick silence lies across the park, broken only by the honking of geese and the croaking of frogs. It is a place to smell, to see, to feel, to quietly let one’s mind wander where it wants. More and more commonly, I see people here talking on their cell phones as they walk around the trail. Their attention is focused not on the scene in front of them, but on a disembodied voice coming from a small box. And they are disembodied themselves. Where are their minds and bodies? Certainly not present in the park. Nor can they be located in the electromagnetic waves and digital signals flowing through cyberspace. Only their voices can be found at the other end of their conversations, in the offices and boardrooms and homes of the people they are talking to. They are attempting to be several places at once, like quantum waves. But I would argue that they are nowhere.
Alan Lightman (The Accidental Universe: The World You Thought You Knew)
When the bullhorn signaled that he'd met the qualifying time,he struggled to gather his wits,waiting until Devil was right alongside the gate before he freed his hand,cutting himself loose. He flew through the air and over the corral fence,landing in the dirt at Marilee Trainor's feet. "My God! Don't move." She was beside him in the blink of an eye,kneeling in the dirt,probing for broken bones. Wyatt lay perfectly still,enjoying the feel of those clever, practiced hands moving over him.When she moved from his legs to his torso and arms,he opened his eyes to narrow slits and watched her from beneath lowered lids. She was the perfect combination of beauty and brains.He could see the wheels turning as she did a thorough exam.Even her brow,furrowed in concentration,couldn't mar that flawless complexion. Her eyes, the color of the palest milk chocolate, were narrowed in thought.Strands of red hair dipped over one cheek, giving her a sultry look. Satisfied that nothing was broken, she sat back on her heels,feeling a moment of giddy relief. That was when she realized that he was staring. She waved a hand before his eyes. "How many fingers can you see?" "Four fingers and a thumb. Or should I say four beautiful,long,slender fingers and one perfect thumb,connected to one perfect arm of one perfectly gorgeous female? And,I'm happy to add,there's no ring on the third finger of that hand." She caught the smug little grin on his lips. Her tone hardened. "I get it. A showboat.I should have known.I don't have time to waste on some silver-tongued actor." "Why,thank you.I had no idea you'd examined my tongue.Mind if I examine yours?" She started to stand,but his hand shot out,catching her by the wrist. "Sorry.That was really cheesy, but I couldn't resist teasing you." His tone altered,deepened,just enough to have her glancing over to see if he was still teasing. He met her look. "Are you always this serious?" Despite his apology,she wasn't about to let him off the hook,or change her mind about him.
R.C. Ryan (Montana Destiny)
The Parthenon was 228 feet long by 101 broad, and 64 feet high; the porticoes at each end had a double row of eight columns; the sculptures in the pediments were in full relief, representing in the eastern the Birth of Athene, and in the western the Struggle between that goddess and Poseidon, whilst those on the metopes, some of which are supposed to be from the hand of Alcamenes, the contemporary and rival of Phidias, rendered scenes from battles between the Gods and Giants, the Greeks and the Amazons, and the Centaurs and Lapithæ. Of somewhat later date than the Parthenon and resembling it in general style, though it is very considerably smaller, is the Theseum or Temple of Theseus on the plain on the north-west of the Acropolis, and at Bassæ in Arcadia is a Doric building, dedicated to Apollo Epicurius and designed by Ictinus, that has the peculiarity of facing north and south instead of, as was usual, east and west. Scarcely less beautiful than the Parthenon itself is the grand triple portico known as the Propylæa that gives access to it on the western side. It was designed about 430 by Mnesicles, and in it the Doric and Ionic styles are admirably combined, whilst in the Erectheum, sacred to the memory of Erechtheus, a hero of Attica, the Ionic order is seen at its best, so delicate is the carving of the capitals of its columns. It has moreover the rare and distinctive feature of what is known as a caryatid porch, that is to say, one in which the entablature is upheld by caryatides or statues representing female figures. Other good examples of the Ionic style are the small Temple of Niké Apteros, or the Wingless Victory, situated not far from the Propylæa and the Parthenon of Athens, the more important Temple of Apollo at Branchidæ near Miletus, originally of most imposing dimensions, and that of Artemis at Ephesus, of which however only a few fragments remain in situ. Of the sacred buildings of Greece in which the Corinthian order was employed there exist, with the exception of the Temple of Jupiter at Athens already referred to, but a few scattered remains, such as the columns from Epidaurus now in the Athens Museum, that formed part of a circlet of Corinthian pillars within a Doric colonnade. In the Temple of Athena Alea at Tegea, designed by Scopas in 394, however, the transition from the Ionic to the Corinthian style is very clearly illustrated, and in the circular Monument of Lysicrates, erected in 334 B.C. to commemorate the triumph of that hero's troop in the choric dances in honour of Dionysos, and the Tower of the Winds, both at Athens, the Corinthian style is seen at its best. In addition to the temples described above, some remains of tombs, notably that of the huge Mausoleum at Halicarnassus in memory of King Mausolus, who died in 353 B.C., and several theatres, including that of Dionysos at Athens, with a well-preserved one of larger size at Epidaurus, bear witness to the general prevalence of Doric features in funereal monuments and secular buildings, but of the palaces and humbler dwelling-houses in the three Greek styles, of which there must have been many fine examples, no trace remains. There is however no doubt that the Corinthian style was very constantly employed after the power of the great republics had been broken, and the Oriental taste for lavish decoration replaced the love for austere simplicity of the virile people of Greece and its dependencies. CHAPTER III
Nancy R.E. Meugens Bell (Architecture)
As we pass the mirror in the bedroom, my attention is drawn to the lovely couple in the reflection. There is a man, tall with broad shoulders. His red hair cut short. He has nothing but a towel on. In his arms is a female, slender but muscular. Her wheat colored hair is pulled back in a neat bun on top of her head. Both of their skin is smooth and flawless, a little paler than most, but still complete perfection. You can tell by the way the man holds her, he cares a lot for her. You can also tell that he is afraid of holding her too tight, not wanting to crush her smaller frame into his body. Looking at this young pair in the mirror, one can only wonder of all the possibilities. What led them to this place? What is in store for them? Will there be a happy ending?
Elle A. Rose (Broken Rules (The Chronicles of Amber Harris, #2))
Perhaps we as a culture have so emphasized the sexual dimension of maleness and femaleness that we have lost sight of the power of friendship
Andrew Comiskey (Strength in Weakness: Healing Sexual and Relational Brokenness)
Sorcha took the elevator down to the basement of the fashion house. She glanced at her stunningly beautiful reflection in the mirror and smiled to herself. How fortunate she was to be a vampire - no gray hairs, no wrinkles, no broken nails, no weight problems, and no PMT. What bliss! And how fortunate it was that all the legends about vampires were not true. She could not imagine an existence where she could not see and admire her own likeness - such a life to her would be intolerable and tedious. How could any female, even a vampire, survive without being able to see their own reflection? How could they do their hair and makeup? The very idea was totally preposterous.
Alan Kinross (Longinus The Vampire: Redemption)
There were times in meeting I was called a baby sitter, a social worker by my colleagues. Now that we have a different leader, he looks at it the way I look at it, and he supported me in what I was doing. There were times he saw me crying, and he would comfort me and say that’s okay. Commissioner Paul Farquharson was one of my biggest supporters. It used to hurt me, because I was trying to help somebody and they say I was babysitting. Don’t tell me I am babysitting, now that I have retired now I am babysitting. So not because I was trying to reach out and work with those children, don’t say I was babysitting them. I work the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) for 22 years and I was rough in CID. I realize CID was the end result, because whenever you get to that stage you are almost finished. It is in line with the broken window theory, if you can save those youngsters before they start committing those big offenses, then they wouldn’t reach CID. Crime prevention was a part of my job, I believe in going out there and trying to prevent that youngster from committing crime. He should respect other people’s property. Supt. Allerdyce Strachan, the first female officer to rise to the rank of superintendent on the Royal Bahamas Police Force.
Drexel Deal (The Fight of My Life is Wrapped Up in My Father (The Fight of My Life is Wrapped in My Father Book 1))
Before I was born my father disowned me. You know those ones who get the females pregnant, and then say the baby is not theirs? He rejected me, told my mother that I am not his child, so I never had a relationship with my father. Shelton ‘Apples’ Burrows reform gang leader
Drexel Deal (The Fight of My Life is Wrapped Up in My Father (The Fight of My Life is Wrapped in My Father Book 1))
How many times do I have to say it?” Sylvan said through gritted teeth. “I have vowed never—” “Never to call a bride,” Baird finished for him. “I know, I know. I just wish you would change your mind, Brother. Wish you could experience the joy I feel when I hold Olivia in my arms.” “I wish it too,” Sylvan admitted in a low voice. “But even if I hadn’t made a sacred vow to the Mother of All Life, I could never call a bride. That part of me is…broken. Damaged beyond repair.” “Don’t you think I was broken too?” Baird demanded, frowning at him. “After what I went through on the Scourge Fathership? Hell, I was shattered into a thousand pieces but Olivia fixed me. I’m telling you, Sylvan, the right female can heal your wounds if you’d just give her a chance.” “No such female exists.” Sylvan stared down at the program clutched tightly in his hand. “Not for me.” Baird
Evangeline Anderson (Hunted (Brides of the Kindred, #2))
Sweat streaked her face and darkened her red hair. Her free hand was scratched and bleeding where she had scraped it against a thorn tree. He caught that small hand in his and held it up to examine the wound. The tip of a broken thorn was embedded in her palm. He raised her hand to his lips and felt the splinter with the tip of his tongue. She gasped and pulled her hand back. “Be still,” he admonished. “Do you want me to cut it out with my knife?” A thorn could fester and turn flesh black with poison. Dead, she was of no use to him. She shook her head. Her hand trembled as she held it out to him. Her sky eyes were wary, the expression like that of a doe he had once seen crossing a frozen lake in winter. The ice had been rotten, and it creaked ominously with each step the deer took. Still she had continued on until she reached the far bank and safety. He wondered if firm earth waited for this female with the strange blue eyes. Eventual safety or . . . A shudder of revulsion rippled through him. War should be between men, he thought. And no matter how much contempt he felt for Simon Brandt and those he led to Indian country, he could not find it in his heart to despise this courageous woman, even if she was without honor. Gently, he bent and brushed his lips against her hand, then, when he found the thorn with his tongue, he closed his teeth on it and pulled it free. Blood welled up from her palm as he spat out the bit of wood. He scooped up a handful of snow and pressed it against the injury. She blinked. Moisture glistened in her round eyes and for a second he thought she might begin to cry. Then her eyes narrowed and the expression gleaming there hardened. Again, Talon reminded himself that she was his enemy’s wife, and that she wished him dead.
Judith E. French (This Fierce Loving)
If I trace its breaking point I come across the eternity of the primitive impulse. The sea river is a cold impasse. Will I find secrets there? In my dream I am standing on a frozen lake, the second sex and I can hear female voices all around me.
Abigail George (Sleeping Under Kitchen Tables in the Northern Areas (The Broken Family, #1))
At Jenna's questioning glance, he explained, "As the White Rider, I used to wear all white. Few people here have ever seen me dressed in any other way. I wouldn't wonder that most of them could be standing right in front of me, wearing these clothes, and not even look twice." Jenna grinned at him. "Not if they're female, they won't. I doubt there's a woman alive who would not look twice at you, babe." He snorted, absurdly pleased by the flattery, although he tried not to show it. "We'll just have to try and stay away from women, then, won't we?
Deborah Blake (Dangerously Charming (Broken Riders, #1))
As soon as we reached the campsite, where we would launch the boat and start setting the traps, Steve was into it immediately. He would scan up and down the river system for an hour and a half, dozens of miles, getting to know where the crocs hung out. He was able to match a croc to each slide, each track, belly print, and foot mark in the mud. He even remembered crocodiles from the year before, recalling them by name. As he set the traps, Steve specifically targeted different-sized animals that he and the other scientists had agreed to catch: big males, breeding females, and subadults. He set floating traps and soft mesh traps. Steve would often catch more crocs in a single day than the team could cope with. Some of the crocodiles had amazing injuries. One had been hit by a crossbow. The arrow had stuck into the back of its head so deep that no probe that we used could find the end of the wound. Other crocs had fought among themselves. One that we affectionately named Trevor had two broken legs. When we tried to pick up his front legs to tuck them into his sides, we felt only floppy bits of busted-up bone, which would twist in unnatural angles. “I want to take this crocodile home,” I said. Steve laughed. “This croc is still big and fat and fighting fit,” he said. “Don’t worry about him.” As luck would have it, we caught Trevor a second time. “Here’s the deal,” I said to Steve. “If we catch this crocodile once more, I’m taking him home.” He could see I was serious. Perhaps it was intentional that Steve never caught Trevor again.
Terri Irwin (Steve & Me)
I don’t think a female running a house is a problem, a broken family. It’s perceived as one because of the notion that a head is a man. Two parents can’t raise a child any more than one. You need a whole community –– everybody –– to raise a child. The notion that the head is the one who brings in the most money is a patriarchal notion, that a woman –– and I have raised two children, alone –– is somehow lesser than a male head. Or that I am incomplete without the male. This is not true. And the little nuclear family is a paradigm that just doesn’t work. It doesn’t work for white people or for black people. Why we are hanging onto it, I don’t know. It isolates people into little units –– people need a larger unit.
Nina Power (One Dimensional Woman)
Specially in Nepal and Indian simultaneously in pure consciousness soul in UK, in Europe, America, Australia, Asia and few parts of Africa they tell a fable about Shreeom as a Vishnu that: There was once a great devotee of Dhurba who prayed night and day to see his God Shreeom Vishnu. The father and mother of Dhrub name are Uttanapad and Suniti respectively. The devotion is a lesson in surrendering all one's cares and worries to the Divine Shreeom Vishnu. King Uttanapada,the son of Manu had two wives, one named Suruchi who was very dear to him and the other, Suniti, to whom he was indifferent. helpless on account of the king’s neglect. One day Suniti’s son Dhruva saw Uttama, Suruchi’s son, sitting on the lap of the king, their father. When the king took up Dhurba on his lap, a jealous Suruchi severely abused the king. Dhruva went away heart-broken to his mother, who advised him that the one way to overcome the bad effects of one’s own past actions was to seek shelter at your feet. Hearing his mother’s words, Dhruva just five years old but highly sensitive and self-respecting, very faithful and devotion left the city, determined to devote himself to Vishnu Shreeom worship. He had an opportune meeting with Sage Narada and being instructed in Shreeom sacred name, then Dhurba entered the forest of Madhu, where he engaged himself in severe austerities in adoration and devotion of Shreeom. Finally because of such great devotion Shreeom appeared as a Vishnu and blessed Dhurba. Knowing this, Shreeom affectionately touched his cheek and his body with hand, was the seed of all sound and solving of all the problems of Dhruba. Shreeom had been provided all the necessary knowledge of the world to Dhurba . He then sang Shreeom Vishnu praise, having been purified and enlightened by Shreeom's touch. After many years Dhurba and his mother and father entered the region called Dhruva-loka and lived there joyfully even now as the Pole Star, the Dhruva Tara. That story is about thousands of years ago. Now again in this time Shreeom Vishnu is on earth as a human form with Sankha and Chakra and many Gods and Goddess, Brahmas, Devis, father's and mother's soul all the time, fortunate male and female divinity and Sadhus, Santas, Pandits, scientists and presidents and prime ministers of every nations, kings and queens, pure and Knowledgeable existence are with Shreeom.
Shreeom
The sensation I was feeling on the clifftop was some sort of reverberation in the air itself.… The whale had submerged and I was still feeling something. The strange rhythm seemed now to be coming from behind me, from the land, so I turned to look across the gorge … where my heart stopped.… Standing there in the shade of the tree was an elephant … staring out to sea!… A female with a left tusk broken off near the base.… I knew who she was, who she had to be. I recognized her from a color photograph put out by the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry under the title “The Last Remaining Knysna Elephant.” This was the Matriarch herself.… She was here because she no longer had anyone to talk to in the forest. She was standing here on the edge of the ocean because it was the next, nearest, and most powerful source of infrasound. The underrumble of the surf would have been well within her range, a soothing balm for an animal used to being surrounded by low and comforting frequencies, by the lifesounds of a herd, and now this was the next-best thing. My heart went out to her. The whole idea of this grandmother of many being alone for the first time in her life was tragic, conjuring up the vision of countless other old and lonely souls. But just as I was about to be consumed by helpless sorrow, something even more extraordinary took place.… The throbbing was back in the air. I could feel it, and I began to understand why. The blue whale was on the surface again, pointed inshore, resting, her blowhole clearly visible. The Matriarch was here for the whale! The largest animal in the ocean and the largest living land animal were no more than a hundred yards apart, and I was convinced that they were communicating! In infrasound, in concert, sharing big brains and long lives, understanding the pain of high investment in a few precious offspring, aware of the importance and the pleasure of complex sociality, these rare and lovely great ladies were commiserating over the back fence of this rocky Cape shore, woman to woman, matriarch to matriarch, almost the last of their kind. I turned, blinking away the tears, and left them to it. This was no place for a mere man
Carl Safina (Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel)
This image-restoring calling comes with, and requires, a new family: the church. No one can restore the image alone—only a people can do that, mirroring the original creation of human beings as male and female, the divine communion foreshadowed in the words ‘let us make,’ and the revelation of God as three in one. Whatever our family of origin, the church becomes our ‘first family,’ bound together in the creative love of the one from whom every family takes its name (Ephesians 3 v 15). And the church is especially for those who, in the twists and turns of a broken world, have lost their human family—widows, orphans, refugees, strangers. They above all are our brothers and sisters, our companions in discovering our new identity in Christ. Our image-restoring calling cannot happen without the church—without each other.” [17]
Daniel Darling (The Dignity Revolution: Reclaiming God's Rich Vision for Humanity)
The Dragon" The bees came out of the junipers, two small swarms The size of melons; and golden, too, like melons, They hung next to each other, at the height of a deer’s breast Above the wet black compost. And because The light was very bright it was hard to see them, And harder still to see what hung between them. A snake hung between them. The bees held up a snake, Lifting each side of his narrow neck, just below The pointed head, and in this way, very slowly They carried the snake through the garden, The snake’s long body hanging down, its tail dragging The ground, as if the creature were a criminal Being escorted to execution or a child king To the throne. I kept thinking the snake Might be a hose, held by two ghostly hands, But the snake was a snake, his body green as the grass His tail divided, his skin oiled, the way the male member Is oiled by the female’s juices, the greenness overbright, The bees gold, the winged serpent moving silently Through the air. There was something deadly in it, Or already dead. Something beyond the report Of beauty. I laid my face against my arm, and there It stayed for the length of time it takes two swarms Of bees to carry a snake through a wide garden, Past a sleeping swan, past the dead roses nailed To the wall, past the small pond. And when I looked up the bees and the snake were gone, But the garden smelled of broken fruit, and across The grass a shadow lay for which there was no source, A narrow plinth dividing the garden, and the air Was like the air after a fire, or before a storm, Ungodly still, but full of dark shapes turning.
Brigit Pegeen Kelly (The Orchard (American Poets Continuum))
We aren’t just hungry to be wanted. We’re starving. And bleeding. And dying. And though we’d never say as much out loud, it’s not a far stretch to say that broken hearts will do anything—believe anything—to be loved. I
Jennifer O'Toole (Autism in Heels: The Untold Story of a Female Life on the Spectrum)
There are few things as tragic as when we tacitly agree to the notion that our unchangeable truth is somehow invalid. Less than. Broken. Wrong. That pretending is necessary for professional opportunity or personal acceptance. I’ve done it a million times in ways large and small, and I can tell you this: trying to hide in plain sight is frustrating, disorienting, isolating—an exhausting game of (only possible) short-term gains in exchange for very-certain long-term exclusion. When we agree to play, we not only hide and cast doubt upon our experiences. We’ve willingly participated in the invalidation of ourselves. And when you have invalidated yourself, there is no limit to what you will allow others to do.
Jennifer O'Toole (Autism in Heels: The Untold Story of a Female Life on the Spectrum)
You shouldn’t antagonize him that much, Helena.” Beelzebub chuckles again. “I don’t think the old man has dealt with females from this time. It’s a very big adjustment for him.” “Do you know how many fucks I have to give for his adjustment right now?” Petting my pockets, I blink at Beelzebub innocently. “None. I have no fucks left.
Maya Daniels (The Devil in Disguise (Broken Halos #4))
There are some women who see nothing wrong with misogyny. In fact, they see a man as a higher being in the social hierarchy than themselves. Yet, they wonder why things don't change in our society.
Mitta Xinindlu
Why aren’t you in a relationship?” she asked. Duncan glanced at her and shrugged. “I was engaged years ago, but my fiancé at the time apparently got lonely while I was deployed. When I came back from Iraq she was pregnant with another man’s child. She was going to break up with me anyway. When I came home broken it just made it easier for her to leave.” Alex knew her mouth was hanging open. “She left you in the hospital? Injured?” He shrugged, moving to set the book on the table. He avoided her eyes. “She had already chosen someone else over me. Honestly, it happens to deployed military all the time.” Alex shook her head, amazed at the audacity of some people. At that moment she had little respect for her own sex, because it was usually the female half of the relationship left behind. “That is so wrong. What a bitch.” Duncan looked up at her, as if deciding whether or not her words were true. “We wouldn’t have been a good match anyway. Yes, it hurt at the time but we’re both better off for not being together. What about you? Why no ring?” Alex blinked. “Well, seems like there are more frogs in my life than princes. I’ve been in a couple of relationships but nothing epic. It just never happened.” She
J.M. Madden (Embattled Ever After (Lost and Found #5))
When insulin levels are elevated, the rate at which muscle proteins are broken down decreases. This, in turn, creates a more anabolic environment in which muscles can grow larger more quickly. DIETARY
Michael Matthews (Thinner Leaner Stronger: The Simple Science of Building the Ultimate Female Body)
Lydia displays her right hand and instantly bathed the room with a blinding light. It lasted only a moment before it drew back into her palm. “I can fix you if you’re ever broken.
Nathan Reese Maher
So what do you want?” St. Just asked quietly. Winnie looked away, reminding him poignantly of Emmie in the midst of difficult discussions. “What do you want, princess?” he asked again. “I want…” Winnie’s little shoulders heaved, and still St. Just waited. “I want Emmie to s-s-stay.” She hurled herself across the mattress, sending her writing implements flying in her haste to throw herself into St. Just’s arms. “Don’t let her go away, please,” Winnie wailed. “I’ll be good, just… Make her stay. You have to make her stay.” He wrapped her in his arms and held her while she cried, producing a handkerchief when the storm seemed to be subsiding. All the while he held her, he thought of Her Grace raising ten children, ten little hearts that potentially broke over every lost stuffed bear, dead pony, and broken toy. Ten stubborn little chins, ten complicated little minds, each as dear and deserving as the last, and all with intense little worlds of their own. Ye Gods. And what to say? Never lie to your men, St. Just admonished himself… “I don’t want her to go, either,” St. Just murmured when Winnie’s tears had quieted to sniffles. “But Emmie has her business to run, Win. She won’t go far, though, just back to the cottage, and we can visit her there a lot.” Like hell. “She isn’t going to the cottage,” Winnie replied with desperate conviction. “She’s going to marry Vicar and his brother will die and she’ll be rich, but far, far away. Cumbria is like another country, farther away than Scotland or France or anywhere.” “Hush,” St. Just soothed, fearing he was about to witness the youngest female crying jag of his experience. “Emmie hasn’t said anything to me, Winnie, and I think she’d let me know if she were going somewhere.” She had, however, told him to find another governess by Christmas at the latest. “She’s going,” Winnie said, heartsick misery in her tone. “I know it, but she’ll listen to you if you tell her to stay.” “I can’t tell her, Win.” St. Just rose to turn back the bedcovers. “I can only ask.” “Then ask her,” Winnie pleaded as she scooted between the sheets. “Please, you have to.” “I will ask her what her plans are, but that doesn’t affect your needing and deserving a governess. Understand?” When Winnie’s chin jutted, he dropped onto the bed and met her eyes. “We haven’t hired anybody yet, we haven’t even interviewed anybody yet, and we won’t expect you to tolerate anybody who isn’t acceptable to both Emmie and me, all right?” “I don’t want a governess,” Winnie said, but her tone was whimpery, miserable, and hopeless. “I understand that, and I only want you to have a governess you’re going to like, Winnie. All I’m asking is that you give somebody a chance to help you learn, whether Emmie’s here, back at the cottage, or married to the Vicar.” “I love Emmie,” Winnie said, reaching for Mrs. Bear. “I love Emmie, and I don’t want her to go, and I don’t want her to marry Vicar.” “Neither do I, princess.” St. Just blew out her candle. “Neither do I.” He
Grace Burrowes (The Soldier (Duke's Obsession, #2; Windham, #2))
The first eight female ATA pilots were only allowed to fly light aircraft which could be easily replaced ‘if broken by women’.
M.J. Foreman (Bomber Girls)
New sounds rustled through her anti-depressant haze; a gentle reverberation from the heart of the home... another creek... another thunk... rapid clicking like the wings of a broken cricket. Then, raindrops on metal... the escalating blare of a car horn... the scream of wet tires and the clink clink clink of showering glass.
Jake Vander-Ark (Fallout Dreams)
Can’t you tell I’m broken?” she demanded. “I can’t stand anyone touching me!” “You handled me touching you until I pushed you too far.” “Freaking out because someone you’re enjoying kissing tries to get closer to you is not normal.” “It wasn’t normal that I was turned into a vampire because a female vamp became obsessed with my best friend,” David replied. “When Liam didn’t follow after her, she decided to turn his friends in the hopes she would get him to fall in line with her. That’s about as far from normal as it gets. I didn’t have a clue about the paranormal being real when my transformation occurred. Vampires were for horror movies, not reality. Life’s not normal. Shit happens. We all work through it.” “Is that so, Dr. Phil?” The frustrating man smiled at her. “That’s so,” David replied.
Brenda K. Davies (Fractured (Vampire Awakenings, #6))
Quincy ducked through a small alleyway between buildings and worked her confident way through the backstreets. The route was abundantly full of refuse bins, forgotten crates, and various laundry, hanging from back windows. Several cats, the local monarchy that Qunicy had long been acquainted with, were granting them passage while sitting atop the maze of half-broken fences. Quincy saluted a black female—the reigning queen—and passed through a slender passage between two buildings, leading them out onto Fair Street and its adjoining park in a manner of minutes.
Beth Brower (The Q)
If he knew anything about heterosexual females, he knew that Paul would be a solid 9.5, if not a full 10 for most of them, despite the face his nose had obviously been broken at some point. Or maybe because of the fact. Nothing like a little DANGER: KEEP OUT sign to get some girls scaling the walls.
Vicki Grant (36 Questions That Changed My Mind About You)
Dane?” Shea asked, surprise in her voice.   The man paused then reached up and removed his goggles. The move made him seem even more unfamiliar, forcing his hair to stick straight up in tuffs. He peered closer at them, his face equally surprised.   “Shea! You’re alive.” He sounded excited and happy.   “Not just her,” Witt said, relaxing his stance but not yet putting his sword away.   “Witt, my friend!” Dane started to bound down the stairs but was brought up short by the rope around his waist. He turned and snapped, “Do you mind? I’m trying to greet people I thought were dead!”   “Keep your pants on,” an irate female voice growled back. “This isn’t the place for such things. You can do your happy dance when we get out.”   Shea arched an eyebrow at the second voice and bit back a grin as Dane turned back to them and let out a heavy sigh.   “Guess the reunion will have to wait. Grumpy britches back there will have a cow if we don’t get a move on.” Dane turned to walk up the stairs. “Follow us. They tell me the path has moved a bit since the last time you’ve been through, Shea.”   With that, the mist swallowed him again, though his voice echoed back to them as he argued with his companion.
T.A. White (Wayfarer's Keep (The Broken Lands, #3))
He clutched the handle of the knife with the same strength the gang members used to kick him. He was worthless, like a crumpled bit of trash thrown, but not worth picking up, that doesn’t even deserve a courteous foot nudge to hide. He was unseen, like the skin beneath the toga of a female statue made of stone. He was ugly, like the damaged face of the deformed stranger you try not to look at because you don’t want it in your memory. He was as soft as the pull-tab of a soda can, as easily broken as a straw wrapper, and as close to death as a baby slug crawling next to a group of kids at summer camp.
Kristian Ventura (The Goodbye Song)
The stone eater at the core of the obelisk floats before her. It’s her first time being close to one. All the books say that stone eaters are neither male nor female, but this one resembles a slender young man formed of white-veined black marble, clothed in smooth robes of iridescent opal. Its—his?—limbs, marbled and polished, splay as if frozen in mid-fall. His head is flung back, his hair loose and curling behind him in a splash of translucence. The cracks spread over his skin and the stiff illusion of his clothing, into him, through him. Are you alright? she wonders, and she has no idea why she wonders it, even as she herself cracks apart. His flesh is so terribly fissured; she wants to hold her breath, lest she damage him further. But that is irrational, because she isn’t here and this isn’t real. She is on a street about to die, but this stone eater has been dead for an age of the world. The stone eater closes his mouth, opens his eyes, and lowers his head to look at her. “I’m fine,” he says. “Thank you for asking.” And then the obelisk shatters.
N.K. Jemisin (The Fifth Season (The Broken Earth, #1))
It was ridiculous to expect that someone imprisoning people in some ad hoc cell would leave in all the ingredients to effect an escape but, nevertheless, she felt that some universal rule had been broken. They had nothing better than a club, really. The toasting forks might prick, the lettuce strainer might pack a punch, and the rolling pins were at least a traditional female weapon, but all you could do with the thing with a funnel and a handle and mysterious screws was baffle people.
Terry Pratchett (Monstrous Regiment (Discworld, #31))
In all my years I’ve never heard of these strange creatures,” said Spidroth. “Hey, who are you calling ‘strange creatures’?” said Kayla. Finally they got back to the giant mushroom where the Council of Meep were. “Um, do you mind if I go in alone?” Dave asked Carl and Spidroth, when they reached the doorway that led up into the mushroom. “There’s something that I need to speak to the Council of Meep about.” “Sure, whatever,” said Carl. “I might go and buy some food from the market. I swear I smelled something that smelled just like a baked potato.” So Dave left Carl and Spidroth, and went back up into the mushroom with Kayla. When he got to the top, the council was waiting. “It is good to see you back,” said Father Meepo. “You managed to rescue your friends then?” “I did,” said Dave. “Father Meepo, I want to talk to you about our deal. About me becoming the next Farmer.” “I knew it!” said a female meep. “He wants to renege on our deal!” “You know that the deal we made is eternally binding?” said Father Meepo darkly. “It cannot be broken.” “I know,” said Dave, “but I was wondering if it could be… delayed?” “Delayed for how long?” asked Father Meepo. “There’s this bad guy named Herobrine,” said Dave, “he’s escaped and slain one of my friends, and now I think he’s coming for me. I need to be around to stop him.” “We know of Herobrine,” said Father Meepo. “The human who betrayed his own kind.” It was news to Dave that Herobrine was a human, but that was of little interest to him right now. All he cared about was convincing the meeps to give him more time. “Can I just hold off on becoming the new Farmer until Herobrine has been dealt with?” Dave asked. “And… it’s ok with you… could I also wait until after I’ve been to the End and defeated the ender dragon? I set off on my quest to defeat the dragon, and I’d like to still do that if I can.
Dave Villager (Dave the Villager 25: An Unofficial Minecraft Novel (The Legend of Dave the Villager))
What will happen to that vast body of Christians who were told Christianity is a matter of personal wellness, a competitor in the market for Self-therapy, when these shaky foundations no longer hold? Joel Olsteen says heaven has a warehouse full of blessings with my name on them. The only reason I don't have them is because I don't believe hard enough. What will happen when I finally determine I'm not cut out for this Christianity thing because my faith just doesn't pass muster? If Ken Ham is to be believed, it's already too late. The next generation is "already gone" (see supra, page 114). These are the Millennials who have actuated in their twenties what was in their hearts when they were twelve, that is, Christianity was something best grown out of and left behind. They've made their choice, answered the questions. And of those who remain, one wonders what it portends that 44% of younger evangelicals support gay marriage. It shouldn't be too much of a stretch to observe this position has more to do with cultural trends than with serious Scriptural contemplation, or contemplation on any serious theological thought, but try telling them that. Not only would that require transcending the latest slogans, but it would require considering an authority above the dictates of one's Self, and that is heresy in the religion of Gnosticism. But nature has a way of being what it is despite people's attempts to deny or reject it, to say nothing of nature's God. Nature, for example, will have the final vote on the gay marriage issue. No matter how hard two men try, they will never ever make a baby. Nature won't allow that. And eventually people will begin asking what the point of marriage was in the first place. Oh yeah, because two certain types of people – biology calls them male and female – make babies. Or again, human nature will have the final vote on the progressive experiment in collectivist action, say, in health care, and if history is a guide, that vote won't end well for progressives. We truly are individuals, not the Borg. Finally, the law of economic gravity will soon kick in on our national debt as well, reminding us that what can't go on forever won't. Then the fun begins. History teaches that days of leisurely indulgence, the sort which has always begotten Gnosticism, are numbered. It's one thing to shake your fist at the world when living a comfortable existence. Boutique rebellion against Yaltabaoth's systems of control is always fun. It's another thing to be hungry and need a damn bite to eat, or to be cold, because "the system" was finally broken beyond repair. Right around then we hear a galloping sound in the distance. That's the four horsemen coming to do what they are appointed to do. Marantha. S. D. G.
Peter M. Burfeind (Gnostic America: A Reading of Contemporary American Culture & Religion according to Christianity's Oldest Heresy)
There’s no such thing as an Authentic India or a Real Indian. There is no Divine Committee that has the right to sanction one single, authorized version of what India is or should be. There is no one religion or language or caste or region or person or story or book that can claim to be its sole representative. There are, and can only be, visions of India, various ways of seeing it—honest, dishonest, wonderful, absurd, modern, traditional, male, female. They can be argued over, criticized, praised, scorned, but not banned or broken. Not hunted down.
Arundhati Roy (My Seditious Heart: Collected Nonfiction)
I also like to call this category "hypersuck," because women tend to get "sucked" into believing that our bodies are wild, scary, shameful places that need to be managed by an outside source, medicated, controlled, and sterilized. (We have the media and other social influences to thank for that.) We are rewarded for acting/speaking/looking like young girls versus confident women. We have too few powerful, healthy role models, but plenty of exhausted moms and emaciated models front and center on our cultural stage. We have a hard time appreciating our grown-up female bodies. We're made to feel that feminine intuition is fickle. We suspect that our energy is unstable. We're conditioned to think that our periods are shameful and disgusting. We look for ways to fix what's broken. We discipline the highs and lows of our female essence. We disconnect from our own bodies and, often, our deepest sense of knowing. Ultimately, our mind-body conversation tips the scales in a negative direction, and this too affects hormone balance. And since hypersuck (that old cultural conditioning) tricks us into thinking our bodies are supposed to be acting this way, we allow serious hormonal issues - and all the symptoms that tag along - to linger for years before seeking out any kind of sustainable action to help heal ourselves. Sadly, many women lose faith long before reaching the point of action.
Alisa Vitti (WomanCode: Perfect Your Cycle, Amplify Your Fertility, Supercharge Your Sex Drive, and Become a Power Source)
If I ask you to do something for me will you do it?’ She frowned. ‘Well, I’d have to know what this mysterious “something” was, wouldn’t I? I mean, if it was just, “Pass me one of those Wagon Wheels,” you know the ones that you’ve got stashed in the door shelf here – I’m impressed by the way, I had you down as more of a spinach-protein shake kind of a guy – then okay. But if it’s something of a more morally dubious nature – say, “Make a snuff film graphically depicting the gruesome deaths of two enraged male hedgehogs allowed to tear each other apart in a territorial dispute over a Tangle Teaser liberally doused with female hedgehog pheromones,” or, “Vote UKIP in the upcoming by-election” – then no, I wouldn’t be on board.’ He stared at her for a moment, a heavy feeling settling in his chest as he realized just how much she meant to him, how far he would be willing to go to keep her from any form of pain.
Susie Tate (Beyond Repair (Broken Heart, #3))
This is not to say that you shouldn’t warm up at all. One of the most studied warm-up routines in the world is FIFA’s “11+” routine—which consists of isometric holds, agility drills, balance training, and game-play simulations. Studies of female soccer players have demonstrated that this type of warm-up reduces injury rates by around 30%.193 Passive stretching is conspicuously vacant from the 11+ warm-up.
Scott H Hogan (Built from Broken: A Science-Based Guide to Healing Painful Joints, Preventing Injuries, and Rebuilding Your Body)
savage. Illiterate, unschooled in the Classics, but she and I have argued endlessly, night on end, about the nature of God, and why the universe was created the way it was. She stunned me the other day, proposed that nothing could have existed until God split into two to create duality. Only when the Godhead had broken into male and female could it begin to define itself. It has interesting possibilities, since only in duality can identity be measured against something else.
W. Michael Gear (Coyote Summer: Saga of the Mountain Sage, Book Four: A Classic Historical Western Series)
I suppose that loudmouthed bastard told you more than was necessary.' 'You voted against me,' she said, her cold voice belying the crack in her chest. 'You have done nothing to prove you are able to handle such a terrible power,' Amren said with equal iciness. 'On that barge, you told me as much when you walked away from any attempt at mastering it. I offered to teach you more, and you walked away.' 'I walked away because you chose my sister.' Just as Elain had done. Amren had been her friend, her ally, and yet in the end, it hadn't mattered one bit. She'd picked Feyre. 'I didn't choose anyone, you stupid girl,' Amren snapped. 'I told you that Feyre had requested you and I work together again, and you somehow twist that into me siding with her?' Nesta said nothing. 'I told them to leave you alone for months. I refused to speak about you with them. And then the moment I realised my behaviour was not helping you, that maybe your sister was right, I somehow betrayed you?' Nesta shook. 'You know how I feel about Feyre.' 'Yes, poor Nesta, with a younger sister who loves her so dearly she's willing to do anything to get her help.' Nesta blocked out the memory of Tamlin in his beast form, how she had wanted to rip him limb from limb. She was no better than him, in the end. 'Feyre doesn't have me.' She didn't deserve Feyre's love. Just as Tamlin hadn't. Amren barked out a laugh. 'That you believe Feyre doesn't only proves you're unworthy of your power. Anyone that willingly blind cannot be trusted. You would be a walking nightmare with those weapons.' 'It's different now.' The words rang hollow. Was it any different? Was she any different that she'd been this summer, when she and Amren had fought on the barge, and Amren's utter disappointment in her failure to be anything had surfaced at last? Amren smiled, as if she knew that, too. 'You can train as hard as you want, fuck Cassian as often as you want, but it isn't going to fix what's broken if you don't start reflecting.' 'Don't preach at me.. You-' She pointed at Amren, and could have sworn the female stepped out of the line of fire. Just as Tamlin had done. As if Amren also remembered that the last time Nesta had pointed at an enemy, it had ended with his severed head in her hands. A joyless laugh broke from her. 'You think I'd mark you with a death-promise?' 'You nearly did with Tamlin the other day.' So Cassian had told them all about that, too. 'But I'll say to you again what I said on that barge. I think you have powers that you still do not understand, respect, or control.' 'How dare you assume you know what is best for me?' When Amren didn't answer, Nesta hissed, 'You were my friend.' Amren's teeth flashed. 'Was I? I don't think you know what that word means.' Her chest ached, as if that invisible fist had punched her once again. Steps thudded beyond the shattered door, and she braced for Cassian to come roaring in- But it was Feyre.
Sarah J. Maas (A ​Court of Silver Flames (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #4))
All day you have been on my mind A seagull perched on an old wharf piling by the steely grip of its claws shrieking when any other comes too near waiting for fish or what the tide brings shaking out its long white wings like laundry. All day you have been on my mind a thrift store glamour hat that doesn't fit with a perky veil scratching my cheek with a feather hanging down like a broken tail.
Marge Piercy (The Moon Is Always Female: Poems)
Step by step instructions to Introduce Sex Toys In The Bedroom Since Fifty Shades of Gray is so mainstream, the majority of the media is discussing sex and sex toys. It is safe to say that you are interested about attempting them however are excessively humiliated? Is it accurate to say that you are uncertain whether they are directly for you and your relationship? Coming up next are some normal misguided judgments about grown-up toys: A great many people don't utilize sex toys Wrong! Numerous good individuals utilize grown-up toys, including individuals most would think about superbly ordinary. Utilizing a grown-up toy doesn't make you "odd" or doesn't utter a word negative about your relationship. It just encourages you have a ton of fun progressively fun in the room! You don't need to impart to your companions, your supervisor or your mom that you utilize toys except if anybody except if you need to. Sex toys are only for masturbation. While grown-up toys are normally utilized for masturbation, numerous couples appreciate utilizing toys together, regardless of whether they are female or male or hetero or gay. Normally these couples are happy with attempting new things together, are liberal, and trusting. Your accomplice will feel lacking on the off chance that you begin utilizing a sex toy. Is it true that you are anxious that in the event that you carry a grown-up toy into the room, it will offend your partner? A grown-up toy can give you a climax, yet it can't disclose to you the amount they cherish you or rub your back. An item is certifiably not a substitute for a genuine individual. On the off chance that your sweetheart has this dread, be touchy and stroke his or her sense of self a smidgen. Similarly as with most relationship issues, great openness is of the utmost importance. Utilizing sex toys can be physically perilous. No chance! Indeed, grown-up toys can have beneficial outcomes on your sexual wellbeing. For instance, numerous specialists and advisors prescribe grown-up toys to ladies who experience difficulty arriving at climax; on the off chance that you experience the ill effects of agonizing sex, vibrators can invigorate blood stream; all ladies can profit by kegel exercisers or kegel balls to condition the pelvic floor muscles; prostate massagers decrease the danger of prostate disease, erectile brokenness and successive evening pee. Ultimately, climaxes help you live more, square torment and, some state, look more youthful. Who wouldn't need that? On the off chance that you use sex toys excessively, you won't have a climax with your accomplice. On the off chance that your accomplice is apprehensive you'll supplant the person in question with your preferred toy, guarantee the person in question that you'll generally keep things diverse in the room: attempt various positions, new toys, light subjugation and dream play.
vibrators
During the first day of orientation, an instructor from the general studies department asked a group of freshmen and transfer students if any of us had read and liked Jane Austen. I raised my hand eagerly, and said in my still somewhat broken English that I found her characters—created two centuries earlier—to be instantly relatable. “Wrong,” the instructor said. “Those books promote female oppression, racism, colonialism, and white supremacy.
Yeonmi Park (While Time Remains: A North Korean Defector's Search for Freedom in America)
The idea that women cannot be overt about their sexuality is rooted in sexist notions of female purity. The idea that Black women must be especially chaste to prove their worth and disprove centuries of propaganda against their sexuality is buying into racism and sexism and making the oppressed responsible for adapting to oppression—instead of demanding that society stop treating women’s sexual desires differently from those of men.
Tamara Winfrey Harris (The Sisters Are Alright: Changing the Broken Narrative of Black Women in America)
If madness is the mark of female singleness, the delirium is spreading. The percentage of married women across all races is decreasing.6 Despite this shift, society’s views on women and marriage have hardly changed since the Irish essayist George Bernard Shaw wrote, at the start of the twentieth century: “It is a woman’s business to get married as soon as possible, and a man’s to keep unmarried as long as possible.”7 Singleness and its associated freedoms are viewed as a man’s game. And a woman without a wedding band, or at the very least an adoring male partner to signal her worthiness, is to be viewed as warily as a steak without a USDA stamp—something must be rotten there.
Tamara Winfrey Harris (The Sisters Are Alright: Changing the Broken Narrative of Black Women in America)