Gender Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Gender. Here they are! All 100 of them:

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I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.
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Charlotte BrontΓ« (Jane Eyre)
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Can I help you with something?" Clary turned instant traitor against her gender. "Those girls on the other side of the car are staring at you." Jace assumed an air of mellow gratification. "Of course they are," he said, "I am stunningly attractive.
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Cassandra Clare (City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1))
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When a man gives his opinion, he's a man. When a woman gives her opinion, she's a bitch.
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Bette Davis
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I hate to hear you talk about all women as if they were fine ladies instead of rational creatures. None of us want to be in calm waters all our lives.
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Jane Austen (Persuasion)
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In politics, If you want anything said, ask a man. If you want anything done, ask a woman.
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Margaret Thatcher
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A man's face is his autobiography. A woman's face is her work of fiction.
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Oscar Wilde
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I do not think, sir, you have any right to command me, merely because you are older than I, or because you have seen more of the world than I have; your claim to superiority depends on the use you have made of your time and experience.
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Charlotte BrontΓ« (Jane Eyre)
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As long as she thinks of a man, nobody objects to a woman thinking.
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Virginia Woolf (Orlando)
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What do you fear, lady?" [Aragorn] asked. "A cage," [Γ‰owyn] said. "To stay behind bars, until use and old age accept them, and all chance of doing great deeds is gone beyond recall or desire.
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J.R.R. Tolkien (The Return of the King (The Lord of the Rings, #3))
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The one thing that unites all human beings, regardless of age, gender, religion, economic status, or ethnic background, is that, deep down inside, we all believe that we are above-average drivers.
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Dave Barry (Dave Barry Turns 50)
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I am not an angel,' I asserted; 'and I will not be one till I die: I will be myself. Mr. Rochester, you must neither expect nor exact anything celestial of me - for you will not get it, any more than I shall get it of you: which I do not at all anticipate.
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Charlotte BrontΓ« (Jane Eyre)
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Women have served all these centuries as looking glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size.
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Virginia Woolf (A Room of One’s Own)
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I was not ladylike, nor was I manly. I was something else altogether. There were so many different ways to be beautiful.
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Michael Cunningham (A Home at the End of the World)
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I do not wish them [women] to have power over men; but over themselves.
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Mary Wollstonecraft (A Vindication of the Rights of Woman)
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Wendy," Peter Pan continued in a voice that no woman has ever yet been able to resist, "Wendy, one girl is more use than twenty boys.
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J.M. Barrie (Peter Pan)
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The history of men's opposition to women's emancipation is more interesting perhaps than the story of that emancipation itself.
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Virginia Woolf (A Room of One’s Own)
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Men learn to love the woman they are attracted to. Women learn to become attracted to the man they fall in love with.
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Woody Allen
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Women have a much better time than men in this world; there are far more things forbidden to them.
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Oscar Wilde
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But boys will be boys, our favorite phrase that excuses so many things, while the only thing we have for the opposite gender is women, said with disdain and punctuated with an eye roll.
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Mindy McGinnis (The Female of the Species)
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Wherever you find a great man, you will find a great mother or a great wife standing behind him -- or so they used to say. It would be interesting to know how many great women have had great fathers and husbands behind them.
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Dorothy L. Sayers (Gaudy Night (Lord Peter Wimsey, #12))
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Ah, women. They make the highs higher and the lows more frequent.
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Friedrich Nietzsche
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My own sex, I hope, will excuse me, if I treat them like rational creatures, instead of flattering their fascinating graces, and viewing them as if they were in a state of perpetual childhood, unable to stand alone.
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Mary Wollstonecraft (A Vindication of the Rights of Woman)
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Race, gender, religion, sexuality, we are all people and that's it. We're all people. We're all equal.
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Connor Franta
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[I]f we revert to history, we shall find that the women who have distinguished themselves have neither been the most beautiful nor the most gentle of their sex.
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Mary Wollstonecraft (A Vindication of the Rights of Woman)
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The problem with gender is that it prescribes how we should be rather than recognizing how we are. Imagine how much happier we would be, how much freer to be our true individual selves, if we didn’t have the weight of gender expectations.
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (We Should All Be Feminists)
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Last night I was seriously considering whether I was a bisexual or not but I don’t think so though I’m not sure if I’d like to be and argh I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, if you like a person, you like the person, not their genitals.
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Jess C. Scott (Tongue-Tied)
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What’s the worst possible thing you can call a woman? Don’t hold back, now. You’re probably thinking of words like slut, whore, bitch, cunt (I told you not to hold back!), skank. Okay, now, what are the worst things you can call a guy? Fag, girl, bitch, pussy. I’ve even heard the term β€œmangina.” Notice anything? The worst thing you can call a girl is a girl. The worst thing you can call a guy is a girl. Being a woman is the ultimate insult. Now tell me that’s not royally fucked up.
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Jessica Valenti (Full Frontal Feminism)
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If women are expected to do the same work as men, we must teach them the same things.
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Plato (The Republic)
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The female mind is certainly a devious one, my lord." Vetinari looked at his secretary in surprise. "Well, of course it is. It has to deal with the male one.
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Terry Pratchett (Unseen Academicals (Discworld, #37; Rincewind, #8))
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A woman knows very well that, though a wit sends her his poems, praises her judgment, solicits her criticism, and drinks her tea, this by no means signifies that he respects her opinions, admires her understanding, or will refuse, though the rapier is denied him, to run through the body with his pen.
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Virginia Woolf (Orlando)
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I think women are foolish to pretend they are equal to men, they are far superior [to men] and always have been.
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William Golding (Lord of the Flies)
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I am not an angel," I asserted; "and I will not be one till I die: I will be myself.
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Charlotte BrontΓ« (Jane Eyre)
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Culture does not make people. People make culture. If it is true that the full humanity of women is not our culture, then we can and must make it our culture.
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (We Should All Be Feminists)
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I would rather trust a woman's instinct than a man's reason.
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Stanley Baldwin
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Some people ask: β€œWhy the word feminist? Why not just say you are a believer in human rights, or something like that?” Because that would be dishonest. Feminism is, of course, part of human rights in generalβ€”but to choose to use the vague expression human rights is to deny the specific and particular problem of gender. It would be a way of pretending that it was not women who have, for centuries, been excluded. It would be a way of denying that the problem of gender targets women.
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (We Should All Be Feminists)
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Men are more interesting in books than they are in real life.
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Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)
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We've begun to raise daughters more like sons... but few have the courage to raise our sons more like our daughters.
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Gloria Steinem
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My own definition is a feminist is a man or a woman who says, yes, there’s a problem with gender as it is today and we must fix it, we must do better. All of us, women and men, must do better.
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (We Should All Be Feminists)
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Do you really believe ... that everything historians tell us about men – or about women – is actually true? You ought to consider the fact that these histories have been written by men, who never tell the truth except by accident.
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Moderata Fonte (The Worth of Women: Wherein Is Clearly Revealed Their Nobility and Their Superiority to Men (The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe))
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Anything may happen when womanhood has ceased to be a protected occupation.
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Virginia Woolf (A Room of One’s Own)
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Calvin: I used to hate writing assignments, but now I enjoy them. I realized that the purpose of writing is to inflate weak ideas, obscure poor reasoning, and inhibit clarity. With a little practice, writing can be an intimidating and impenetrable fog! Want to see my book report? Hobbes: (Reading Calvin's paper) "The Dynamics of Interbeing and Monological Imperatives in Dick and Jane: A Study in Psychic Transrelational Gender modes." Calvin: Academia, here I come!
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Bill Watterson (Homicidal Psycho Jungle Cat (Calvin and Hobbes, #9))
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Why is it that all cars are women?" he asked. "Because they're fussy and demanding," answered Zee. "Because if they were men, they'd sit around and complain instead of getting the job done," I told him.
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Patricia Briggs (Silver Borne (Mercy Thompson, #5))
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I have not lived as a woman. I have lived as a man. I've just done what I damn well wanted to, and I've made enough money to support myself, and ain't afraid of being alone.
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Katharine Hepburn
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Gender preference does not define you. Your spirit defines you.
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P.C. Cast (Awakened (House of Night, #8))
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A woman's guess is much more accurate than a man's certainty.
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Rudyard Kipling (Plain Tales from the Hills)
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Most men fear getting laughed at or humiliated by a romantic prospect while most women fear rape and death.
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Gavin de Becker (The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us from Violence)
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Dude, I don’t want to talk about Lacey’s prom shoes. And I’ll tell you why: I have this thing that makes me really uninterested in prom shoes. It’s called a penis.
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John Green (Paper Towns)
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I do not think I ever opened a book in my life which had not something to say upon woman's inconstancy. Songs and proverbs, all talk of woman's fickleness. But perhaps you will say, these were all written by men." "Perhaps I shall. Yes, yes, if you please, no reference to examples in books. Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in their hands. I will not allow books to prove anything.
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Jane Austen (Persuasion)
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A man is lucky if he is the first love of a woman. A woman is lucky if she is the last love of a man.
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Charles Dickens
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It is in vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquillity: they must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it. Millions are condemned to a stiller doom than mine, and millions are in silent revolt against their lot. Nobody knows how many rebellions besides political rebellions ferment in the masses of life which people earth. Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts, as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, to absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags. It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex.
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Charlotte BrontΓ« (Jane Eyre)
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A woman is human. She is not better, wiser, stronger, more intelligent, more creative, or more responsible than a man. Likewise, she is never less. Equality is a given. A woman is human.
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Vera Nazarian (The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration)
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I am a rare species, not a stereotype.
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Ivan E. Coyote
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Girls can be athletic. Guys can have feelings. Girls can be smart. Guys can be creative. And vice versa. Gender is specific only to your reproductive organs (and sometimes not even to those), not your interest, likes, dislikes, goals, and ambitions.
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Connor Franta (A Work in Progress)
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I knew I was different. I thought that I might be gay or something because I couldn't identify with any of the guys at all. None of them liked art or music. They just wanted to fight and get laid. It was many years ago but it gave me this real hatred for the average American macho male.
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Kurt Cobain
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Teach her that the idea of 'gender roles' is absolute nonsense. Do not ever tell her that she should or should not do something because she is a girl. 'Because you are a girl' is never reason for anything. Ever.
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions)
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The problem with gender is that it prescribes how we should be rather than recognizing how we are.
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (We Should All Be Feminists)
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A man does what he can; a woman does what a man cannot.
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Isabel Allende (InΓ©s of My Soul)
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If men could see us as we really are, they would be a little amazed; but the cleverest, the acutest men are often under an illusion about women: they do not read them in a true light: they misapprehend them, both for good and evil: their good woman is a queer thing, half doll, half angel; their bad woman almost always a fiend.
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Charlotte BrontΓ« (Shirley)
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Men know that women are an overmatch for them, and therefore they choose the weakest or the most ignorant. If they did not think so, they never could be afraid of women knowing as much as themselves.
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Samuel Johnson (A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland and The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides)
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To call woman the weaker sex is a libel; it is man's injustice to woman. If by strength is meant brute strength, then, indeed, is woman less brute than man. If by strength is meant moral power, then woman is immeasurably man's superior. Has she not greater intuition, is she not more self-sacrificing, has she not greater powers of endurance, has she not greater courage? Without her, man could not be. If nonviolence is the law of our being, the future is with woman. Who can make a more effective appeal to the heart than woman?" [To the Women of India (Young India, Oct. 4, 1930)]
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Mahatma Gandhi
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A girl’s got to use what she’s given and I’m not going to make a guy drool the way a Britney video does. So I take it to extremes. I don’t say I dress sexily on stage - what I do is so extreme. It’s meant to make guys think: β€˜I don’t know if this is sexy or just weird.
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Lady Gaga
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Boys, Laila came to see, treated friendship the way they treated the sun: its existence undisputed; its radiance best enjoyed, not beheld directly.
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Khaled Hosseini (A Thousand Splendid Suns)
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Whatever women do they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily, this is not difficult.
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Charlotte Whitton
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...remember the ladies, and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the Ladies we are determined to foment a Rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice, or Representation.
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Abigail Adams
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My dear boy, no woman is a genius. Women are a decorative sex. They never have anything to say, but they say it charmingly. Women represent the triumph of matter over mind, just as men represent the triumph of mind over morals.
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Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray)
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It is vain to expect virtue from women till they are in some degree independent of men.
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Mary Wollstonecraft (A Vindication of the Rights of Woman)
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Women were created from the rib of man to be beside him, not from his head to top him, nor from his feet to be trampled by him, but from under his arm to be protected by him, near to his heart to be loved by him.
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Matthew Henry (An exposition of the Old and New Testament Volume 6)
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Women need to feel loved and men need to feel needed.
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Rita Mae Brown (Riding Shotgun)
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Usually when you see females in movies, they feel like they have these metallic structures around them, they are caged by male energy.
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BjΓΆrk
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Oh shit did you just dis the feminine gender I'll pummel your ass then stick you in a blender You think I like Tori and Ani so I can't rhyme But I got flow like Ghostbusters got slime Objectify women and it's fuckin' on You'll be dead and gone like ancient Babylon.
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John Green (Looking for Alaska)
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Alaska decided to go help Dolores with dinner. She said that it was sexist to leave the cooking to the women, but better to have good sexist food than crappy boy-prepared food.
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John Green (Looking for Alaska)
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...sitting and waiting is one of the most miserable occupations known to man - not that it usually is known to men; women do it much more often.
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Diana Gabaldon (Dragonfly in Amber (Outlander, #2))
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All your words are but to say: you are a woman, and your part is in the house. But when the men have died in battle and honour, you have leave to be burned in the house, for the men will need it no more. But I am of the House of Γ‰orl and not a serving-woman. I can ride and wield blade, and I do not fear either pain or death.
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J.R.R. Tolkien
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She's a woman, you're a dude. You're not supposed to understand her. That's not what she's after.... She doesn't want you to understand her. She knows that's impossible. She just wants you to understand yourself. Everything else is negotiable.
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Neal Stephenson (Snow Crash)
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I waited to be told what was good about me. [...] All that time I had spent readying myself, the articles that taught me life was really just a waiting room until someone noticed you- the boys had spent that time becoming themselves.
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Emma Cline (The Girls)
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That was part of being a girl--you were resigned to whatever feedback you'd get. If you got mad, you were crazy, and if you didn't react, you were a bitch. The only thing you could do was smile from the corner they'd backed you into. Implicate yourself in the joke even if the joke was always on you.
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Emma Cline (The Girls)
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Boys who spent their weekends making banana nut muffins did not, as a rule, excel in the art of hand-to-hand combat.
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David Sedaris (Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim)
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It's a good thing I was born a girl, otherwise I'd be a drag queen.
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Dolly Parton
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When, however, one reads of a witch being ducked, of a woman possessed by devils, of a wise woman selling herbs, or even of a very remarkable man who had a mother, then I think we are on the track of a lost novelist, a suppressed poet, of some mute and inglorious Jane Austen, some Emily Bronte who dashed her brains out on the moor or mopped and mowed about the highways crazed with the torture that her gift had put her to. Indeed, I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.
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Virginia Woolf (A Room of One’s Own)
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Girls can wear jeans and cut their hair short and wear shirts and boots because it's okay to be a boy; for girls it's like promotion. But for a boy to look like a girl is degrading, according to you, because secretly you believe that being a girl is degrading.
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Ian McEwan (The Cement Garden)
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Men are visually aroused by women's bodies and less sensitive to their arousal by women's personalities because they are trained early into that response, while women are less visually aroused and more emotionally aroused because that is their training. This asymmetry in sexual education maintains men's power in the myth: They look at women's bodies, evaluate, move on; their own bodies are not looked at, evaluated, and taken or passed over. But there is no "rock called gender" responsible for that; it can change so that real mutuality--an equal gaze, equal vulnerability, equal desire--brings heterosexual men and women together.
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Naomi Wolf (The Beauty Myth)
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The woman was made of a rib out of the side of Adam; not made out of his head to rule over him, nor out of his feet to be trampled upon by him, but out of his side to be equal with him, under his arm to be protected, and near his heart to be beloved.
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Matthew Henry (Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible)
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There is no such thing as a woman who doesn’t work. There is only a woman who isn’t paid for her work.
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Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men
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He shook his head. "The next time I hear a women going on about how neurotic men are, I'm going to remember this. You tell me you like my body, and what do I say? I say, thank you. Then I tell you I like yours and what do I hear? A long lists of grievances.
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Susan Elizabeth Phillips (Kiss an Angel)
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Because you've got guy parts, you're automatically a better mechanic than me? I don't think so," Eve said, and bailed out of the passenger side.
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Rachel Caine (Fade Out (The Morganville Vampires, #7))
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who are you really? you are not a name or a height, or a weight or a gender you are not an age and you are not where you are from you are your favorite books and the songs stuck in your head you are your thoughts and what you eat for breakfast on Saturday mornings you are a thousand things but everyone chooses to see the million things you are not you are not where you are from you are where you are going and i'd like to go there too
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m.k
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I love you," he said. She looked up at him, her eyes shiny and black, then looked away. "I know," she said. He pulled one of his arms out from under her and traced her outline against the couch. He could spend all day like this, running his hand down her ribs, into her waist, out to her hips and back again.... If he had all day, he would. If she weren't made of so many other miracles. "You know?" he repeated. She smiled, so he kissed her. "You're not the Han Solo in this relationship, you know." "I'm totally the Han Solo," she whispered. It was good to hear her. It was good to remember it was Eleanor under all this new flesh. "Well, I'm not the Princess Leia," he said. "Don't get so hung up on gender roles," Eleanor said.
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Rainbow Rowell (Eleanor & Park)
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So now I'm thinking about it. I'm imagining sitting down with my parents and actually saying, "I'm gay." And you know what? It makes me a little mad. I mean, straight guys don't have to sit their parents down and tell them they like girls.
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Michael Thomas Ford (Suicide Notes)
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When you grow up as a girl, it is like there are faint chalk lines traced approximately three inches around your entire body at all times, drawn by society and often religion and family and particularly other women, who somehow feel invested in how you behave, as if your actions reflect directly on all womanhood.
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M.E. Thomas (Confessions of a Sociopath: A Life Spent Hiding in Plain Sight)
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A man once asked me ... how I managed in my books to write such natural conversation between men when they were by themselves. Was I, by any chance, a member of a large, mixed family with a lot of male friends? I replied that, on the contrary, I was an only child and had practically never seen or spoken to any men of my own age till I was about twenty-five. "Well," said the man, "I shouldn't have expected a woman (meaning me) to have been able to make it so convincing." I replied that I had coped with this difficult problem by making my men talk, as far as possible, like ordinary human beings. This aspect of the matter seemed to surprise the other speaker; he said no more, but took it away to chew it over. One of these days it may quite likely occur to him that women, as well as men, when left to themselves, talk very much like human beings also.
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Dorothy L. Sayers (Are Women Human? Astute and Witty Essays on the Role of Women in Society)
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the wounded child inside many males is a boy who, when he first spoke his truths, was silenced by paternal sadism, by a patriarchal world that did not want him to claim his true feelings. The wounded child inside many females is a girl who was taught from early childhood that she must become something other than herself, deny her true feelings, in order to attract and please others. When men and women punish each other for truth telling, we reinforce the notion that lies are better. To be loving we willingly hear the other’s truth, and most important, we affirm the value of truth telling. Lies may make people feel better, but they do not help them to know love.
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bell hooks (All About Love: New Visions)
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Nearly every guy I've dated believed they should already be famous, believed that greatness was their destiny and they were already behind schedule. An early moment of intimacy often involved a confession of this sort: a childhood vision, teacher's prophecy, a genius IQ. At first, with my boyfriend in college, I believed it, too. Later, I thought I was just choosing delusional men. Now I understand it's how boys are raised to think, how they are lured into adulthood. I've met ambitious women, driven women, but no woman has ever told me that greatness was her destiny.
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Lily King (Writers & Lovers)
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He always thought of the sea as 'la mar' which is what people call her in Spanish when they love her. Sometimes those who love her say bad things of her but they are always said as though she were a woman. Some of the younger fishermen, those who used buoys as floats for their lines and had motorboats, bought when the shark livers had brought much money, spoke of her as 'el mar' which is masculine.They spoke of her as a contestant or a place or even an enemy. But the old man always thought of her as feminine and as something that gave or withheld great favours, and if she did wild or wicked things it was because she could not help them. The moon affects her as it does a woman, he thought.
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Ernest Hemingway (The Old Man and the Sea)
β€œ
I’m a modern man, a man for the millennium. Digital and smoke free. A diversified multi-cultural, post-modern deconstruction that is anatomically and ecologically incorrect. I’ve been up linked and downloaded, I’ve been inputted and outsourced, I know the upside of downsizing, I know the downside of upgrading. I’m a high-tech low-life. A cutting edge, state-of-the-art bi-coastal multi-tasker and I can give you a gigabyte in a nanosecond! I’m new wave, but I’m old school and my inner child is outward bound. I’m a hot-wired, heat seeking, warm-hearted cool customer, voice activated and bio-degradable. I interface with my database, my database is in cyberspace, so I’m interactive, I’m hyperactive and from time to time I’m radioactive. Behind the eight ball, ahead of the curve, ridin the wave, dodgin the bullet and pushin the envelope. I’m on-point, on-task, on-message and off drugs. I’ve got no need for coke and speed. I've got no urge to binge and purge. I’m in-the-moment, on-the-edge, over-the-top and under-the-radar. A high-concept, low-profile, medium-range ballistic missionary. A street-wise smart bomb. A top-gun bottom feeder. I wear power ties, I tell power lies, I take power naps and run victory laps. I’m a totally ongoing big-foot, slam-dunk, rainmaker with a pro-active outreach. A raging workaholic. A working rageaholic. Out of rehab and in denial! I’ve got a personal trainer, a personal shopper, a personal assistant and a personal agenda. You can’t shut me up. You can’t dumb me down because I’m tireless and I’m wireless, I’m an alpha male on beta-blockers. I’m a non-believer and an over-achiever, laid-back but fashion-forward. Up-front, down-home, low-rent, high-maintenance. Super-sized, long-lasting, high-definition, fast-acting, oven-ready and built-to-last! I’m a hands-on, foot-loose, knee-jerk head case pretty maturely post-traumatic and I’ve got a love-child that sends me hate mail. But, I’m feeling, I’m caring, I’m healing, I’m sharing-- a supportive, bonding, nurturing primary care-giver. My output is down, but my income is up. I took a short position on the long bond and my revenue stream has its own cash-flow. I read junk mail, I eat junk food, I buy junk bonds and I watch trash sports! I’m gender specific, capital intensive, user-friendly and lactose intolerant. I like rough sex. I like tough love. I use the β€œF” word in my emails and the software on my hard-drive is hardcore--no soft porn. I bought a microwave at a mini-mall; I bought a mini-van at a mega-store. I eat fast-food in the slow lane. I’m toll-free, bite-sized, ready-to-wear and I come in all sizes. A fully-equipped, factory-authorized, hospital-tested, clinically-proven, scientifically- formulated medical miracle. I’ve been pre-wash, pre-cooked, pre-heated, pre-screened, pre-approved, pre-packaged, post-dated, freeze-dried, double-wrapped, vacuum-packed and, I have an unlimited broadband capacity. I’m a rude dude, but I’m the real deal. Lean and mean! Cocked, locked and ready-to-rock. Rough, tough and hard to bluff. I take it slow, I go with the flow, I ride with the tide. I’ve got glide in my stride. Drivin and movin, sailin and spinin, jiving and groovin, wailin and winnin. I don’t snooze, so I don’t lose. I keep the pedal to the metal and the rubber on the road. I party hearty and lunch time is crunch time. I’m hangin in, there ain’t no doubt and I’m hangin tough, over and out!
”
”
George Carlin
β€œ
Let's face it. We're undone by each other. And if we're not, we're missing something. If this seems so clearly the case with grief, it is only because it was already the case with desire. One does not always stay intact. It may be that one wants to, or does, but it may also be that despite one's best efforts, one is undone, in the face of the other, by the touch, by the scent, by the feel, by the prospect of the touch, by the memory of the feel. And so when we speak about my sexuality or my gender, as we do (and as we must), we mean something complicated by it. Neither of these is precisely a possession, but both are to be understood as modes of being dispossessed, ways of being for another, or, indeed, by virtue of another.
”
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Judith Butler (Undoing Gender)
β€œ
I have been to many religious services over the years. Each one I go to only reinforces my general impression that religions have much, much more in common than they like to admit. The beliefs are almost always the same; it's just that the histories are different. Everybody wants to believe in a higher power. Everybody wants to belong to something bigger than themselves, and everybody wants company in doing that. They want there to be a force of good on earth, and they want an incentive to be a part of that force. They want to be able to prove their belief and their belonging, through rituals and devotion. They want to touch the enormity. It's only in the finer points that it gets complicated and contentious, the inability to realize that no matter what our religion or gender or race or geographic background, we all have about 98 percent in common with each other. yes, the differences between male and female are biological, but if you look at the biology as a matter of percentage, there aren't a whole lot of things that are different. Race is different purely as a social construction, not as an inherent difference. And religion--whether you believe in God or Yahweh or Allah or something else, odds are that at heart you want the same things. For whatever reason, we like to focus on the 2 percent that's different, and most of the conflict in the world comes from that.
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David Levithan (Every Day (Every Day, #1))
β€œ
What is a woman's place in this modern world? Jasnah Kholin's words read. I rebel against this question, though so many of my peers ask it. The inherent bias in the inquiry seems invisible to so many of them. They consider themselves progressive because they are willing to challenge many of the assumptions of the past. They ignore the greater assumption--that a 'place' for women must be defined and set forth to begin with. Half of the population must somehow be reduced to the role arrived at by a single conversation. No matter how broad that role is, it will be--by-nature--a reduction from the infinite variety that is womanhood. I say that there is no role for women--there is, instead, a role for each woman, and she must make it for herself. For some, it will be the role of scholar; for others, it will be the role of wife. For others, it will be both. For yet others, it will be neither. Do not mistake me in assuming I value one woman's role above another. My point is not to stratify our society--we have done that far to well already--my point is to diversify our discourse. A woman's strength should not be in her role, whatever she chooses it to be, but in the power to choose that role. It is amazing to me that I even have to make this point, as I see it as the very foundation of our conversation.
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Brandon Sanderson (Words of Radiance (The Stormlight Archive, #2))
β€œ
In reaction against the age-old slogan, "woman is the weaker vessel," or the still more offensive, "woman is a divine creature," we have, I think, allowed ourselves to drift into asserting that "a woman is as good as a man," without always pausing to think what exactly we mean by that. What, I feel, we ought to mean is something so obvious that it is apt to escape attention altogether, viz: (...) that a woman is just as much an ordinary human being as a man, with the same individual preferences, and with just as much right to the tastes and preferences of an individual. What is repugnant to every human being is to be reckoned always as a member of a class and not as an individual person.
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Dorothy L. Sayers (Are Women Human? Astute and Witty Essays on the Role of Women in Society)
β€œ
If you are a woman, if you're a person of colour, if you are gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, if you are a person of size, if you are a person od intelligence, if you are a person of integrity, then you are considered a minority in this world. And it's going to be really hard to find messages of self-love and support anywhere. Especially women's and gay men's culture. It's all about how you have to look a certain way or else you're worthless. You know when you look in the mirror and you think 'oh, I'm so fat, I'm so old, I'm so ugly', don't you know, that's not your authentic self? But that is billions upon billions of dollars of advertising, magazines, movies, billboards, all geared to make you feel shitty about yourself so that you will take your hard earned money and spend it at the mall on some turn-around creme that doesn't turn around shit. When you don't have self-esteem you will hesitate before you do anything in your life. You will hesitate to go for the job you really wanna go for, you will hesitate to ask for a raise, you will hesitate to call yourself an American, you will hesitate to report a rape, you will hesitate to defend yourself when you are discriminated against because of your race, your sexuality, your size, your gender. You will hesitate to vote, you will hesitate to dream. For us to have self-esteem is truly an act of revolution and our revolution is long overdue.
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”
Margaret Cho
β€œ
Adrian looked over at me again. β€œWho knows more about male weakness: you or me?” β€œGo on.” I refused to directly answer the question. β€œGet a new dress. One that shows a lot of skin. Short. Strapless. Maybe a push-up bra too.” He actually had the audacity to do a quick assessment of my chest. β€œEh, maybe not. But definitely some high heels.” β€œAdrian,” I exclaimed. β€œYou’ve seen how Alchemists dress. Do you think I can really wear something like that?” He was unconcerned. β€œYou’ll make it work. You’ll change clothes or something. But I’m telling you, if you want to get a guy to do something that might be difficult, then the best way is to distract him so that he can’t devote his full brainpower to the consequences.” β€œYou don’t have a lot of faith in your own gender.” β€œHey, I’m telling you the truth. I’ve been distracted by sexy dresses a lot.” I didn’t really know if that was a valid argument, seeing as Adrian was distracted by a lot of things. Fondue. T-shirts. Kittens. β€œAnd so, what then? I show some skin, and the world is mine?” β€œThat’ll help.” Amazingly, I could tell he was dead serious. β€œAnd you’ve gotta act confident the whole time, like it’s already a done deal. Then make sure when you’re actually asking for what you want that you tell him you’d be β€˜so, so grateful.’ But don’t elaborate. His imagination will do half the work for you. ” I shook my head, glad we’d almost reached our destination. I didn’t know how much more I could listen to. β€œThis is the most ridiculous advice I’ve ever heard. It’s also kind of sexist too, but I can’t decide who it offends more, men or women.” β€œLook, Sage. I don’t know much about chemistry or computer hacking or photosynthery, but this is something I’ve got a lot of experience with.” I think he meant photosynthesis, but I didn’t correct him. β€œUse my knowledge. Don’t let it go to waste.
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Richelle Mead (The Indigo Spell (Bloodlines, #3))