Melinda Quotes

Jack, there are only two of us here. One of us is going to push him out, one of us is going to catch him. Which job do you want?” (Melinda talking to her husband)

It's the mark of a backward society - or a society moving backward - when decisions are made for women by men.

Every society says its outsiders are the problem. But the outsiders are not the problem; the urge to create outsiders is the problem. Overcoming that urge is our greatest challenge and our greatest promise. It will take courage and insight, because the people we push to the margins are the ones who trigger in us the feelings we're afraid of.

If you want to lift up humanity, empower women. It is the most comprehensive, pervasive, high-leverage investment you can make in human beings.

Being a feminist means believing that every woman should be able to use her voice and pursue her potential, and that women and men should all work together to take down the barriers and end the biases that still hold women back.

If you don’t set your own agenda, somebody else will.” If I didn’t fill my schedule with things I felt were important, other people would fill my schedule with things they felt were important.

That is why we women have to lift each other up—not to replace men at the top of the hierarchy, but to become partners with men in ending hierarchy.

Poverty is not being able to protect your family. Poverty is not being able to save your children when mothers with more money could. And because the strongest instinct of a mother is to protect her children, poverty is the most disempowering force on earth.

As women gain rights, families flourish, and so do societies. That connection is built on a simple truth: Whenever you include a group that's been excluded, you benefit everyone. And when you're working globally to include women and girls, who are half of every population, you're working to benefit all members of every community. Gender equity lifts everyone. Women's rights and society's health and wealth rise together.

How could there be different Gods, Lief?" "I don't believe there are any at all," he says quietly. "But I believe there are men and women whose lives are made easier by believing someone is watching over them.

I am the perfect weapon, I can kill with a single touch.

Forget all the rules. Forget about being published. Write for yourself and celebrate writing.

How can you fall in love at first sight when you can't even see?

It may be a lifetime before I see you again on the far side of time. Wait for me. Look for me. Please don't forget me, Melinda Skye because one day I will come to you. I will come.

What extreme poverty really means is that no matter how hard you work, you’re trapped. You can’t get out. Your efforts barely matter. You’ve been left behind by those who could life you up.

When people can’t agree, it’s often because there is no empathy, no sense of shared experience. If you feel what others feel, you’re more likely to see what they see. Then you can understand one another. Then you can move to the honest and respectful exchange of ideas that is the mark of a successful partnership. That’s the source of progress.

If I come to you, I want it to be because I am choosing you, for no reason other than that. I don't want for to ever doubt it.

…contraceptives are the greatest life-saving, poverty-ending, women-empowering innovation ever created.

Shaming women for their sexuality is a standard tactic for drowning out the voices of women who want to decide whether and when to have children.

So here’s the question,” Melinda led in. “Who’s Tall, Dark and Smoldering?

When women can decide whether and when to have children, it saves lives, promotes health, expands education, and creates prosperity—no matter what country in the world you’re talking about.

Wisdom isn’t about accumulating more facts; it’s about understanding big truths in a deeper way. Year by year, with the support and insights of friends and partners and people who have gone before me, I see more clearly that the primary causes of poverty and illness are the cultural, financial, and legal restrictions that block what women can do—and think they can do—for themselves and their children.

Better to have to retrace your steps and then move forward than never to move forward at all.

In fact, no country in the last fifty years has emerged from poverty without expanding access to contraceptives.

What I realized much later, paradoxically, is that by trying to fit in, I was strengthening the culture that made me feel like I didn’t fit in.

The parents are making threatening noises, turning dinner into performance art, with dad doing his Arnold Schwarzenegger imitation and mom playing Glenn Close in one of her psycho roles. I am the Victim. Mom: [creepy smile] “Thought you could put one over us, did you, Melinda? Big high school students now, don’t need to show your homework to your parents, don’t need to show any failing test grades?” Dad: [bangs table, silverware jumps] “Cut the crap. She knows what’s up. The interim reports came today. Listen to me, young lady. I’m only going to say this to you once. You get those grades up or your name is mud. Hear me? Get them up!” [Attacks baked potato.]

Disrespect for women grows when religions are dominated by men. … I believe without question that the disrespect for women embodied male-dominated religion is a factor in laws and customs that keep women down.

If you invest in a girl or a woman, you’re investing in everyone else.

To bring about a revolution of the heart, you have to let your heart break. Letting your heart break means sinking into the pain that’s underneath the anger.... If you don’t accept the suffering, hurt can turn to hatred.

Fortune favors the bold." I smile weakly. "So does death," she counters immediately. "The craven tend to live much longer than the heroic.

The truth is only relevant if you can prove it.” And wasn’t that a sad fact of life.

It is especially galling that some of the people who want to cut funding for contraceptives cite morality. In my view, there is no morality without empathy, and there is certainly no empathy in this policy. Morality is loving your neighbor as yourself, which comes from seeing your neighbor as yourself, which means trying to ease your neighbor’s burdens—not add to them.

A person can say a lot without speaking.

I have gotten one question repeatedly from young men. These are guys who liked the book, but they are honestly confused. They ask me why Melinda was so upset about being raped.

Twenty minutes later, I walk out of Melinda's hotel with a plate of finger sandwiches, a bag of prostitute clothes, and a weird wedge on my head that makes me look like you could tip me upside down and fill it with cream of mushroom. I need another donut.

We all want to have something to offer. This is how we belong. It’s how we feel included. So if we want to include everyone, then we have to help everyone develop their talents and use their gifts for the good of the community. That’s what inclusion means—everyone is a contributor. And if they need help to become a contributor, then we should help them, because they are full members in a community that supports everyone.

Somehow she could always think better when all her hair was out of her face. Stupid, but true.

That’s the trouble with knowing things: you can’t un-know them. Once you let yourself look at them, or say them aloud, they become real.

never sacrificing your self-respect. That is power.

Please don't miss me too much. Please don't be too sad. Find someone else to love, because you have much love to give and it's a gift that shouldn't be wasted. You , Jesse, were the rose that made my life sweet.I will wait for you in heaven.

We grew up together but we won't grow old together.

Self-hatred is the best vehicle for making people do as they’re told because they are hungry to get approval.

Because when you lift up women, you lift up humanity.

Without Melinda, you'd have no Camus." I exhale. "I know." I know it to my fucking bones.

Cancer isn't the worst thing that can happen to a person. And neither is dying young. Taking life for granted, living badly-- these things seem far worse to me. In many ways- ways that count- I'm the luckiest girl in the world.

Their cup is not empty; you can’t just pour your ideas into it. Their cup is already full, so you have to understand what is in their cup.” If you don’t understand the meaning and beliefs behind a community’s practices, you won’t present your idea in the context of their values and concerns, and people won’t hear you.

Were you disappointed?” She takes a deep breath, looking down at her hands. “My heart was. My head wasn’t. Most days I’m at war with myself. My head wins, usually. And for that I’m glad.

We actually do have a lot of guns. There's a lot of hunting in Norway. But there's almost no gun violence." "Why do you think that is?" "On a fundamental level," says Sigrid, "I think it's because we don't want to shoot each other." "That could be our problem right there," says Melinda

The value of identity is that it so often comes with purpose.

Submission doesn't mean weakness; it means exploring your wants and desires and being strong enough to give control of yourself to someone else.

... but for now it's too great a pleasure to stay in my own cottage, with my own books, and do exactly what I want to do.

That's the problem with fairy tales, they change with the telling.

And I said, ‘I’m thinkin’ I’ve wasted too much time thinkin’, is what I’m thinkin'.

I am not cunning...I'm good at seeing around obstacles is all.

People can be equal but still be isolated—not feeling the bonds that tie them together. Equality without connection misses the whole point.

sometimes all that’s needed to lift women up is to stop pulling them down.

Today in the US, we’re sending our daughters into a workplace that was designed for our dads—set up on the assumption that employees had partners who would stay home to do the unpaid work...

In the stories of old, a hero is the one who sweeps in with a drawn sword and noble face, to kill the Dragon and free the princess. In the stories of old it never seems to dawn on the princess that she should be careful not to put herself at mercy of those who would do her ill in the first place. I don't live in the stories of old.

Maria loved the way she and Liz could just sit in the same room together, each doing their own thing, sometimes talking, sometimes not. You had to be really good friends with someone before it felt this comfortable to basically ignore them for long stretches of time.

Death was final. There was no time for a final kiss or caress, to apologize for a harsh word or argument. The world imploded with no warning.

I’ve learned that being alone and being lonely are not the same thing. Once I was surrounded by people and lonely for it, but now I’m alone and I’ve never been so content.

Always dream big and dare to believe!

Jokes are many things. 'Funny' is only one of them.

Opportunities have to be equal before you can know if abilities are equal. And opportunities for women have never been equal.

If there is any meaning in life greater than connecting with other human beings, I haven’t found it.

The goal is for everyone to be connected. The goal is for everyone to belong. The goal is for everyone to be loved. Love is what lifts us up.

Hidup seperti roda yang berputar, kadang di atas dan kadang dia melindas.

Benvolio had never been in love, and he was certain that he was not now. When he compared the turmoil Rosaline provoked in him to Romeo’s sighing, poetical ardor, he found they had little in common. He felt no urge to write sonnets, nor to moan her name and weep. That was love. This was—irritating. No

Contraceptives save the lives of mothers and newborns. Contraceptives also reduce abortion. As a result of contraceptive use, there were 26 million fewer unsafe abortions in the world’s poorest countries in just one year, according to the most recent data.

To be known without being loved it terrifying To be loved without being known has no power to change us But be to be deeply known and deeply loved transforms us (from Melinda's friend, Killian)

We always protect our heads, our faces,' he commented as he followed a half-step behind and to her left. It's pure instinct; to shield the eyes. The irony is that the blind have no eyes to protect, and suffer most of their injuries on their legs. But instinct can be blind, too.

The world is full of what seem like intractable problems. Often we let that paralyze us. Instead, let is spur you to action. There are some people in the world that we can't help, but there are so many more that we can. So when you see a mother and her children suffering in another part of the world, don't look away. Look right at them. Let them break your heart, then let your empathy and your talents help you make a difference in the lives of others. Whether you volunteer every week or just a few times a year, your time and unique skills are invaluable.

Marriage isn’t about romance. It’s about commitment through the drudgery of everyday life, when the moonlight and roses have turned to sick children and medical bills.

...the Colonel hadn't raised a damsel in distress. He'd raised a damsel who caused distress.

I can see the things he doesn’t say, because they’re written all over him.

Why do I matter to you?” I say, my voice breaking. “You don’t.” “Then why are you doing this?” “Because I can. Because I slept for five hundred years and now I want some sport.

It's difficult to grieve for an idea.

Overcoming the need to create outsiders is our greatest challenge as human beings.

Gender bias does worldwide damage. It’s a cause of low productivity on farms. It’s a source of poverty and disease. It’s at the core of social customs that keep women down.

The rules that shape the lives of employees in the workplace today often don’t honor the lives of employees outside the workplace. That can make the workplace a hostile place—because it pits your work against your family in a contest one side has to lose.

I believe that all lives have equal value. That all men and women are created equal. That everyone belongs. That everyone has rights, and everyone has the right to flourish. I believe that when people who are bound by the rules have no role in shaping the rules, moral blind spots become law, and the powerless bear the burden. … I believe that entrenched social norms that shift society’s benefits to the powerful and its burdens to the powerless not only hurt the people pushed out but also always hurt the whole.

Being yourself sounds like a saccharine prescription for how to make it in an aggressive culture. But it’s not as sweet as it sounds. It means not acting in a way that’s false just to fit in. It’s expressing your talents, values, and opinions in your style, defending your rights, and never sacrificing your self-respect. That is power.

And most of us fall into one of the same three groups: the people who try to create outsiders, the people who are made to feel like outsiders, and the people who stand by and don’t stop it.

If I ever see myself as separate or superior, if I try to lift myself up by pulling down others, if I believe people are on a journey I have completed, doing personal work I have mastered, attempting tasks I've accomplished--if I have any feeling that I am above them instead of trying to rise with them, then I have isolated myself from them.

Melinda settled back against the bricks. Just go in. Let me escape. Jake would interrogate her, no doubt. Maybe she should just never go home. Get a job again and be independent. Avoid the thought of having babies. Or failing at it.

They were unironic enthusiasts for all the mass pleasures the culture offered: television, NASCAR, cruises, Disney World, sports, celebrity gossip, and local politics. Szabo often wished that he could be as well adjusted as Melinda's family, but he would have had to be medicated to pursue her list of pleasures.

The most radical approach to resistance is acceptance--and acceptance does not mean accepting the world as it is. It means accepting our pain as it is. If we refuse to accept our pain, then we're just trying to make ourselves feel better--and when our hidden motive is to make ourselves to feel better, there is no limit to the damage we can do in the name of justice.

An abusive culture, to me, is any culture that needs to single out and exclude a group. It’s always a less productive culture because the organization’s energy is diverted from lifting people up to keeping people down. It’s like an autoimmune disease where the body sees its own organs as threats and begins attacking them. One of the most common signs of an abusive culture is the false hierarchy that puts women below men.

Here I made this for you. 'Twas finished weeks ago. I should have known better than to expect your attentions when you had no further need of me." She thrust a scrap of cloth at him. "Here." He took it. It was a handkerchief, embroidered with the Montague crest. "Thanks." "You're welcome. Go choke on it.

The United States is one of only eight countries in the world that do not provide paid maternity leave…This is startling evidence that the United States is far behind the rest of the world in honoring the needs of families.

Change is scary. You’re going to be all right. You’re tough.

Ain't it a shame the body can't go where the heart lives.

The apothecary, the monk and the living Goddess went to war. We sound like the start of a joke.

I have a shocking memory - I remember everything.

It’s the mark of a backward society—or a society moving backward—when decisions are made for women by men. That’s what’s happening right now in the US.

Killian says, “To be known without being loved is terrifying. To be loved without being known has no power to change us. But to be deeply known and deeply loved transforms us.

there is no morality without empathy,

Isn’t it strange to see that, even as one’s own story unfolds, others are traveling through their own, which may be just as interesting?

my full-time job is working with my wife, Melinda,

Faith in action to me means going to the margins of society, seeking out those who are isolated, and bringing them back in. I was putting my faith into action when I went into the field and met the women who asked me about contraceptives. So, yes, there is a Church teaching about contraceptives—but there is another Church teaching, which is love of neighbor. When a woman who wants her children to thrive asks me for contraceptives, her plea puts these two Church teachings into conflict, and my conscience tells me to support the woman’s desire to keep her children alive. To me, that aligns with Christ’s teaching to love my neighbor.

The shriek that erupted from Melinda was loud enough to wake the dead. “Get it off me, get it off me!” She bolted from the crumpled side of the tent in hysterics, ripping at her bodice.

Suzanne trabaja media jornada. Odia a su padre. Y se odia a sí misma por no plantarle cara. Se lamenta de todo. —Pero adoro a Melinda —dice—. Es el toque de belleza en medio de tanta fealdad.

Many successful social movements are driven by the same combination—strong activism and the ability to take pain without passing it on. Anyone who can combine those two finds a voice with moral force.

I’ve never held the view that women are better than men, or that the best way to improve the world is for women to gain more power than men. I think male dominance is harmful to society because any dominance is harmful: It means society is governed by a false hierarchy where power and opportunity are awarded according to gender, age, wealth, and privilege—not according to skill, effort, talent, or accomplishments. When a culture of dominance is broken, it activates power in all of us. So the goal for me is not the rise of women and the fall of man. It is the rise of both women and men from a struggle for dominance to a state of partnership. If the goal is partnership between women and men, why do I put so much emphasis on women’s empowerment and women’s groups? My answer is that we draw strength from each other, and we often have to convince ourselves that we deserve an equal partnership before we get one.

You seem not like a lady give much to swooning, anyway, from what I've seen," he said. "Not much, sir. Swooning stains one's gown with earth." "But not if one is there to catch you, lady." "'Tis true. But men can't be relied upon to follow me about with outstretched arms, and so I think it best to stay upright.

Isabel wondered if there would ever be a time when she could stop being careful. If there would ever be a time when she could use other kinds of power. She missed it. It felt like part of her had been injected with novocaine and was totally numb. Almost dead" (p.35).

Anyone can be made to feel like an outsider. It’s up to the people who have the power to exclude. Often it’s on the basis of race. Depending on a culture’s fears and biases, Jews can be treated as outsiders. Muslims can be treated as outsiders. Christians can be treated as outsiders. The poor are always outsiders. The sick are often outsiders. People with disabilities can be treated as outsiders. Members of the LGBTQ community can be treated as outsiders. Immigrants are almost always outsiders. And in most every society, women can be made to feel like outsiders—even in their own homes. Overcoming the need to create outsiders is our greatest challenge as human beings. It is the key to ending deep inequality. We stigmatize and send to the margins people who trigger in us the feelings we want to avoid. This is why there are so many old and weak and sick and poor people on the margins of society. We tend to push out the people who have qualities we’re most afraid we will find in ourselves—and sometimes we falsely ascribe qualities we disown to certain groups, then push those groups out as a way of denying those traits in ourselves. This is what drives dominant groups to push different racial and religious groups to the margins. And we’re often not honest about what’s happening. If we’re on the inside and see someone on the outside, we often say to ourselves, “I’m not in that situation because I’m different. But that’s just pride talking. We could easily be that person. We have all things inside us. We just don’t like to confess what we have in common with outsiders because it’s too humbling. It suggests that maybe success and failure aren’t entirely fair. And if you know you got the better deal, then you have to be humble, and it hurts to give up your sense of superiority and say, “I’m no better than others.” So instead we invent excuses for our need to exclude. We say it’s about merit or tradition when it’s really just protecting our privilege and our pride.

When will I be sure?” “Sure of what?” “Of me. Of who I am. Of what I’m here for. When will I know?” “Never. You never will. No matter what happens. You will always have those moments of doubt and you will always make mistakes.

Dot sat forward and tugged another handful of bracelets from the snarl. “Here’s something I believe.” She held up a green bracelet so that the sun shone clear through the colors on the beads. “I believe that when women like us meet, that our children in heaven also find their way to each other, on account of us all being in the same place and them watching over. So they’re all together—Stella your pair, Melinda’s, and mine. Right now, they’re up there, singing maybe, or playing Red Rover, and probably laughing at us sitting around trying to fix a mess we ourselves made.

There is a big difference between a loud voice and a strong voice. The loud voice of a man who has no inner life and is a stranger to his own grief is never a voice for justice; it’s a voice for self-interest, dominance, or vengeance.

But I want you,” he smiles at me. “Not just to make me a king. I’ve always wanted you. Despite it all, you are still the bride I would choose. I do choose you.

Someday my prince will come,” she lamented softly, “too fast.

And though he has watched a decent age pass by, a man will sometimes still desire the world.

Motherhood doesn't have a nationality

Marriage is a three ring circus: engagement ring, wedding ring and suffering. ~  Unknown

Small Town Rule #9: Someone is always in your business, but that’s okay because someone also always has your back. Seth

The Negro on saxophone blew out a language older than English and the glasses on the tables trembled

just cus your cat had kittens in the oven don't make em biscuits

that made her heart do a triple-espresso flutter.

Two people could like each other, respect each other, trust each other, and love each other. But it was only when they needed each other that the relationship could truly work.

I had to accept that my job is to do my part, let my heart break for all the women we can’t help, and stay optimistic.

Whoever decided to suspend a spare tire underneath a vehicle should be flogged,

Their cup is not empty; you can’t just pour your ideas into it. Their cup is already full, so you have to understand what is in their cup.

Mysterious boys are not as enjoyable in reality as they are in stories" -Errin

When I am hurt, when I am in pain, when I am angry with someone for what they have done to me, I know the only way to end these feelings is to accept them.

Don’t resist the feeling; accept the suffering.

there will never be a substitute for hearing women’s stories.

we invent excuses for our need to exclude.

love is the effort to help others flourish—and it often begins with lifting up a person’s self-image.

Empathy allows for listening, and listening leads to understanding

This smug nation of yours certainly enjoys grinding its daughters down to a powder.

But at least when she has the beast in her she can see me. She can hear me. When she’s my mother I’m a ghost to her. Like my father, and my brother, except I’m still alive. I’m still here.

Whenever you include a group that’s been excluded, you benefit everyone. And when you’re working globally to include women and girls, who are half of every population, you’re working to benefit all members of every community. Gender equity lifts everyone.

I want them to see that in the universal human desire to be happy, to develop our gifts, to contribute to others, to love and be loved—we’re all the same. Nobody is any better than anybody else, and no one’s happiness or human dignity matters more than anyone else’s.

A 2010 academic study on group intelligence found that the collective intelligence of a workgroup is correlated to three factors: the average social sensitivity of the group members, the group’s ability to take turns contributing, and the proportion of females in the group.

When it’s “he said/she said,” the woman can’t win. But when it’s “he said/she said/she said/she said/she said/she said,” transparency has a chance, and light can flood the places where abusive behavior thrives.

That is the secret of an empowering education: A girl learns she is not who she’s been told she is. She is the equal of anyone, and she has rights she needs to assert and defend. This is how the great movements of social change get traction: when outsiders reject the low self-image society has imposed on them and begin to author a self-image of their own.

Billy, I can’t even pick my nose without using a finger.” Sometimes my mouth should stop and consult my brain before it says anything. Billy got this wide-eyed look of admiration that belonged on a nine-year-old boy. It said, Wow, that was really gross, and, more important, How come I didn’t think of it? My mouth consulted my brain this time, and I asked, “I don’t suppose you could just forget I said that?” “No,” Billy said, in a tone that matched the admiration still in his eyes. “I don’t think I can. I’m going to have to tell that one to Robert.” “Melinda will kill you.

Lavender used to be my favorite color in the box of sixty-four crayons - you know, the one with the sharpener built into the side...It seemed like it could draw anything. It was the right color for everything. I drew lavender flowers and my father's lavender eyes, my mother's lavender smile. They were the same to me, mother, father, flowers. All good. All lavender. And I was lavender, too.

I hate these affairs", he'd told her once, tearing up an engraved invitation to an exclusive charity ball. "They're the worst kind of discrimination. An invitation doesn't really mean that you're invited; it means that a whole lot of people aren't

Being yourself sounds like a saccharin prescription for how to make it in an aggressive culture but it's not as sweet as it sounds. It means not acting in a way that is false just to fit in. It's expressing your talent, values, and opinions in your style, defending your rights, and never sacrificing yourself respect. That is power.

When these barriers are broken and opportunities open up, they not only lift women out of poverty; they can elevate women to equality with men in every culture and every level of society. No other single change can do more to improve the state of the world.

If someone had told me six moons ago, before I watched my life slip through my hands like water, that my mother would be cursed, locked away, and drugged by my own hand, I would have laughed in their face. Then I would have kicked them for the insult and laughed again.

He’d rather run into a hail of bullets than experience the kind of soul-deep loss Bree was handling.

It’s not okay for women to cry at work, but it’s okay for men to YELL at work. Which is the more mature emotional response?”)

Reflecting my life and the Circle of Life in my garden has been a source of Joy and has given a better understanding of the Truth of Love.

He knew what he was missing, why one-night stands weren’t his thing. Closeness. Intimacy. The emotional bond that gave sex its zing.

May your wedding night be like a kitchen table, all legs and no drawers.

In every fairy tale there is a kernel of truth, and that is the truth of this one. For him, I am poison. I am his death. And I will deliver.

And that, my girl, is the secret. Quake all you must on the inside. But on the outside you must be stone. And you never know; with enough practice it might become the truth.

That would be Suzanne, who had started speaking complicated sentences at ten months and may have been about eight years old when she was born." - Ben Logan.

Small town rule #4: Childhood isn’t complete without farm animals and 4-H.

We all want something to offer. This is how we belong. It's how we feel included. So if we want to include everyone, we have to help everyone develop their talents and use their gifts for the good of the community. That's what inclusion means - everyone is a contributes.

Overcoming the need to create outsiders is our greatest challenge as human beings... This is why there are so many old and weak and sick and poor people on the margins of society. We tend to push out the people who have qualities we're most afraid we will find in ourselves

The Catholic Church tries to shut down the discussion of women priests by saying that Jesus chose men as his apostles at the Last Supper, and therefore only men are allowed to be priests. But we could as easily say that the Risen Christ appeared first to a woman and told her to go tell the men, and therefore only women are allowed to bring the Good News to the men.

Burn all the food, and people will starve, weaken, and turn on one another. Destroy the temples and their acolytes, and the people will have nowhere to turn, no sanctuary, no charity. No hope.

I hope the exposure to other people and places shapes what the kids do, but even more I want it to shape who they are. I want them to see that in the universal human desire to be happy, to develop our gifts, to contribute to others, to love and be loved—we’re all the same. Nobody is any better than anybody else, and no one’s happiness or human dignity matters more than anyone else’s.

I’m a king. My father told me a king can rule through fear, or through love. Fifty years from now, the people will love me. They won’t remember this – and those who do will consider it the necessary dark before the dawn. When they have prosperity, and security, and know their place, they will be content and they will love me for it. But until then, I’ll rule through fear if I have to.

I’ve been waiting for you,” he says in his low, ragged voice. All of him is ragged: his patched cloak; his shabby gloves, the fingertips thin and worn; his scuffed boots. His words always seem to catch on my insides, like a goose grass burr, or a torn fingernail dragged across silk. His voice sticks.

Schools that empower students on the margins are subversive organizations. They foster a self-image in the students that is a direct rebuke to the social contempt that tries to keep them in their place.

Sometimes partial kindness kills a person as bad as partial knowin.' Judy said this while she hugged the dress. "But then sometimes partial kindness and partial knowin' is the two best things in the world.

Goodbye, Lizzy. I will see you again, of course—but you will not see me. Not really. You never have. It is too bad. This the part, I suppose, where the novel would wrap up with a tidy boring moral, so I will say this: Love your best friends. Forgive your worst friends. Remember, always, not to judge people too hastily, for everyone is living out a story of their own, and you only get to read the pages you appear on.

He pauses, swipes a matchstick on a column. It bursts into flame. “I tell you, you must take risks in my studio.” He finds a cigarette behind his ear and lights it. “I tell you not to be timid. I tell you to make the choices, make the mistakes, big, terrible, reckless mistakes, really screw it all up. I tell you it is the only way.” An affirmative murmur. “I say this, yes, but I still see so many of you afraid to cut in.” He begins to pace, slowly like a wolf, which is definitely his mirror animal. “I see what you are doing. When you leave yesterday, I go from work to work. You feel like Rambo maybe with the drills, the saws. You make lots of noise, lots of dust, but very few of you have found even this much”—he pinches two fingers together—“of your sculptures. Today this changes.” He walks over to a short blond-haired girl. “May I, Melinda?” “Please,

Men who share caregiving duties are happier. They have better relationships. They have happier children. When fathers take on at least 40 percent of the childcare responsibilities, they are at lower risk for depression and drug abuse, and their kids have higher test scores, stronger self-esteem, and fewer behavioral problems.

What do you know now in a deeper way than you knew it before?” I love this question because it honors how we learn and grow. Wisdom isn’t about accumulating more facts; it’s about understanding big truths in a deeper way.

You’re here,” he says, and his voice is like sunshine, like honey, it’s warm and rich and moreish. “I’m so very glad.” Where Silas’s voice is spikes and edges, every word a warning, this man’s voice is smooth, velvety and beckoning.

I dream of the man, but it’s fragmented: he’s there, but he isn’t. He’s always one room away, in a place with more rooms than seems possible. I run down endless halls, longing for and dreading him being around the corner. I hear him call out for me and the skin on the back of my neck tightens and prickles. I don’t know if I’m running to him, or from him.

US forces were fighting in a land where they couldn’t trust anyone. Not the local interpreters who worked for them. Not the villagers they supplied with food and medicine. Not even the Afghan soldiers they fought with side by side. No one.

In 2009, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation launched a massive project to study 3,000 teachers in seven cities and learn what made them effective. The five metrics that most correlated with student learning were: 1. Students in this class treat the teacher with respect. 2. My classmates behave the way my teacher wants them to. 3. Our class stays busy and doesn’t waste time. 4. In this class, we learn a lot almost every day. 5. In this class, we learn to correct our mistakes.

When women can decide whether and when to have children; when women can decide whether and when and whom to marry; when women have access to healthcare, do only our fair share of unpaid labor, get the education we want, make the financial decisions we need, are treated with respect at work, enjoy the same rights as men, and rise up with the help of other women and men who train us in leadership and sponsor us for high positions—then women flourish … and our families and communities flourish with us.

I’ve heard nauseating stories of women who have given up their dreams because they fear for their safety, who go to worse schools that are closer to home in order to avoid sexual predators. These stories come from all over the world, including the US. Until the day we end all gender-based violence, we need stronger efforts to protect women and girls. There is no equality without safety.

The farmers, who rent out their house so they can stay afloat, and sleep all together in a studio, but spend their days off outside on a picnic blanket, living the lives they want to live. Drew and Melanie, with their two homes and their horses and their love story. And Rene, traveling across the world, painting temporary masterpieces. Even my uncle Pete has something good worked out with Melinda and his day trips and his best friend, my dad, who has a small nice house in San Francisco and a dozen neighborhood vendors who know him by name. All of these different ways of living. Even Sophie, with her baby in that apartment, with her record store job and her record collection. I imagine her twirling with her baby across her red carpet with Diana Ross crooning, the baby laughing, the two of them getting older in that apartment, eating meals on red vinyl chairs. Walt, too, as pathetic as his situation is, seems happy in his basement, providing entertainment to Fort Bragg's inner circle. All of them, in their own ways, manage to make their lives work.

In societies of deep poverty, women are pushed to the margins. Women are outsiders. That’s not a coincidence. When any community pushes any group out, especially its women, it’s creating a crisis that can only be reversed by bringing the outsiders back in. That is the core remedy for poverty and almost any social ill—including the excluded, going to the margins of society and bringing everybody back in.

I’ve come to learn that stigma is always an effort to suppress someone’s voice. It forces people to hide in shame. The best way to fight back is to speak up—to say openly the very thing that others stigmatize. It’s a direct attack on the self-censorship that stigma needs to survive.

One of the defining features of hierarchy is that you take the powerful and exciting jobs for yourself and impose the crummy tasks on others. That's a purpose of hierarchy. So when you come together to share the unpleasant work it's an attack on hierarchy. Because what's the point of hierarchy if not getting someone else to do what you don't want to do? What is hierarchy but a way to escape your share of the responsibilities?

Scarron is the kind of village people are born in and die in. Rarely does anyone leave. Still more rarely does a new face arrive. So unless the girl is in hiding, like Silas was, I should be able to find her easily; she’d be known as the “new one” for the next fifty years if she stayed here.

Sou totalmente a favor do consolo. Se eles simplesmente parassem nisso, mas nunca param. As pessoas sempre decidem ue todos os outros também precisam de consolo e é melhor que seja sua versão do consolo. E, caso não seja, geralmente provam sua tese com a ponta de uma espada ou o cano de uma arma".

Cassie fumbled helplessly beneath the shade of the ancient oak, still searching for her second shoe.The first had been easy to find, having landed close to where she had kicked it off; and when her hand had finally encountered it, she clutched it to her breast in a gesture of smug triumph. For one brief moment, she felt a twinge of sympathy for the sighted people who would never experience such sweet victory from a task as simple as finding a shoe.

I believe that if they faced an appeal from a 37-year-old mother with six children who didn’t have the health to bear and care for another child, they would find a way in their hearts to make an exception. That’s what listening does. It opens you up. It draws out your love—and love is more urgent than doctrine.

Okay, he hadn't exactly been happy. But welcome to the club, right? He had eyes. He could see auras, those swirls of color that surrounded all living things, as unique as fingerprints. And those auras told him there were a lot of people out there who weren't quite happy or exactly miserable. And they were all getting along okay.

I’m not free, my lady,” he says slowly. “I can no more wander off and do as I will than you can.You think of having choices like people think of flying. They see a hawk soaring and hovering and they tell themselves how nice it would be to fly. But pigeons can fly, and sparrows too. No one imagines being a sparrow though. No one wants that.

As women gain rights, families flourish, and so do societies. That connection is built on a simple truth: Whenever you include a group that’s been excluded, you benefit everyone. And when you’re working globally to include women and girls, who are half of every population, you’re working to benefit all members of every community. Gender equity lifts everyone.

And the starting point for human improvement is empathy. Everything flows from that. Empathy allows for listening, and listening leads to understanding. That’s how we gain a common base of knowledge. When people can’t agree, it’s often because there is no empathy, no sense of shared experience. If you feel what others feel, you’re more likely to see what they see. Then you can understand one another. Then you can move to the honest and respectful exchange of ideas that is the mark of a successful partnership. That’s the source of progress.

Anyone can be made to feel like an outsider. It’s up to the people who have the power to exclude. Often it’s on the basis of race. Depending on a culture’s fears and biases, Jews can be treated as outsiders. Muslims can be treated as outsiders. Christians can be treated as outsiders. The poor are always outsiders. The sick are often outsiders. People with disabilities can be treated as outsiders. Members of the LGBTQ community can be treated as outsiders. Immigrants are almost always outsiders. And in most every society, women can be made to feel like outsiders—even in their own homes. Overcoming the need to create outsiders is our greatest challenge as human beings. It is the key to ending deep inequality. We stigmatize and send to the margins people who trigger in us the feelings we want to avoid. This is why there are so many old and weak and sick and poor people on the margins of society. We tend to push out the people who have qualities we’re most afraid we will find in ourselves—and sometimes we falsely ascribe qualities we disown to certain groups, then push those groups out as a way of denying those traits in ourselves. This is what drives dominant groups to push different racial and religious groups to the margins. And we’re often not honest about what’s happening. If we’re on the inside and see someone on the outside, we often say to ourselves, “I’m not in that situation because I’m different. But that’s just pride talking. We could easily be that person. We have all things inside us. We just don’t like to confess what we have in common with outsiders because it’s too humbling. It suggests that maybe success and failure aren’t entirely fair. And if you know you got the better deal, then you have to be humble, and it hurts to give up your sense of superiority and say, “I’m no better than others.” So instead we invent excuses for our need to exclude. We say it’s about merit or tradition when it’s really just protecting our privilege and our pride.

I’m tired of taking people’s sins on myself. I’m tired of running away from everything. I want to be like Errin. Like Nia. Like Sister Hope. I want to be the girl who fought a golem, the girl who slammed her hands on a table and told a room full of powerful women that I was going to fight, and to hell with them. I survived the court of Lormere. I survived the journey to Scarron. I survived the Sleeping Prince’s raid on the Conclave. I am a survivor.

Universities today loudly proclaim their commitment to diversity. But in the meantime, democratization through public investment has been replaced by democratization through consumer credit, effectively transferring the costs of diversity back to the individual student and her family. The beauty of securitized credit is that it excludes no one a priori. By abstracting from class stratification in the present, it can accommodate all differences preemptively simply by pricing them at variable rates and deferring repayment to some barely imaginable point in the future. In principle, we all have access to a college education, no matter how much we or our parents earn. Yet, private credit does not merely obscure the effects of class; it also actively exacerbates inequality by forcing those without income or collateral to pay higher rates for the same service. When the long-term costs of credit begin to materialize and accumulate, students are once again confronted with the intractable resistances of class, race, and gender stratification. The divisions of family wealth reassert themselves with all their historical force.

Empathy allows for listening, and listening leads to understanding. That’s how we gain a common base of knowledge. When people can’t agree, it’s often because there is no empathy, no sense of shared experience. If you feel what others feel, you’re more likely to see what they see. Then you can understand one another. Then you can move to the honest and respectful exchange of ideas that is the mark of a successful partnership. That’s the source of progress.

Once upon a time there was a young apprentice apothecary who lived on a red-brick farm with a golden thatch roof, surrounded by green fields. She had a father who called her a “clever girl” and gave her a herb garden all of her own, and a mother who was whole and kind. She had a brother who knew how to smile and laugh. But then one day her father had an accident and, despite her efforts to save him, he died. And so did all of her hopes and dreams. The farm – the family’s home for generations – was sold. Her mother’s brown hair greyed, her spirit dulled as she drifted towards Almwyk like a wraith, uncomplaining, unfeeling. And her brother, once impulsive and joyful, became cold and hard, his eyes turned east with malice.

I was robbed, Errin.” He strokes my face with his thumb before turning it back to him. “Of my life. Of my inheritance. Snuffed out at barely twenty-two years old. I have spent five hundred years asleep. I woke to nothing. The legacy my family spent generations building is ash, scattered to the wind. I was promised a kingdom,” he snarls. “I was promised the greatest kingdom the world had ever known. And I will have one. If it means cobbling one together from the ruins of Lormere and Tregellan.

If societies are going to elevate women to equality with men—and declare that people of any race or religion have the same rights as anyone else—then we have to have men and women and every racial and religious group together writing the code. … Diversity is the best way to defend equality. If people from diverse groups are not making those decisions, the burdens and benefits of society will be divided unequally and unfairly—with the people writing the rules ensuring themselves a greater share of the benefits and a lesser share of the burdens of any society. … That’s why we have to include everyone in the decisions that shape our cultures, because even the best of us are blinded by our own interests. If you care about equality, you have to embrace diversity—

I think the worst thing is the way you lose part of yourself.” I roll on to my back and stare up at the dark, speckled roof. “There’s so much that only Lief knew about me. So many memories that we shared – mostly of things we shouldn’t have been doing – but now I’m the last one who remembers them. Times we woke in the night and stole honeycomb from the jars in the kitchen. Times we used to jump into the hay on the farm. No one will ever know me like that again. And what if I forget things? What happens then?

She bent down and reached around his trim waist to grab the handcuffs. A bit of a compromising position, given the state of her thoughts, but she had to help the poor guy out before his nose froze off. “There’s a saying here in Switzerland. To be a fool at the right time is an art.” She caught his eye before continuing with the knot. “You better hush, now.” “Well, there’s a saying in the US, too. Imagination is worse than the truth. I have a real vivid imagination, and you bent over me like this is not helping.

(From the Q&A with the author at the end of the book.) Have any readers ever asked questions that shocked you? I have gotten one question repeatedly from young men. These are guys who liked the book, but they are honestly confused. They ask me why Melinda was so upset about being raped. The first dozen times I heard this, I was horrified. But I heard it over and over again. I realized that many young men are not being taught the impact that sexual assault has on a woman. They are inundated by sexual imagery in the media, and often come to the (incorrect) conclusion that having sex is not a big deal. This, no doubt, is why the number of sexual assaults is so high. I am also shocked by adults who feel that rape is an inappropriate topic to discuss with teenagers. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, 44 percent of rape victims are under the age of 18 and 46 percent of those victims are between the ages of 12-15. It makes adults uncomfortable to acknowledge this, but our inability to speak clearly and openly about sexual issues endangers our children. It is immoral not to discuss this with them.

The water rippled when he leaned in; he studied what he saw. Against a background of blue sky, there was his face, broad of forehead and overly long, and he was surprised at the new look of age on him. To everybody else, I must look ten years beyond twenty-seven, he thought, and it made him glad. Even had begun to fear gaps and what they might mean. Wide-spanning spaces between age and its weight of language and ability had begun to feel like easy reasons for saying good-bye. He saw inside the calm reflection a gull flying low over his head, braced by clouds drifting east toward Runnelstown. Turning back, he walked north around moss-based trees and finally found her digging wild onions growing thick next to fern. With her back to him she said, "Tired does one of two things-either builds the soul or breaks the heart. Can't decide which it is right now. All I know is I'm tired.

One of the longest-running public health studies dates from the 1970s, when half of the families in a number of villages in Bangladesh were given contraceptives and the other half were not. Twenty years later, the mothers who took contraceptives were healthier. Their children were better nourished. Their families had more wealth. The women had higher wages. Their sons and daughters had more schooling. The reasons are simple: When the women were able to time and space their pregnancies, they were more likely to advance their education, earn an income, raise healthy children, and have the time and money to give each child the food, care, and education needed to thrive. When children reach their potential, they don’t end up poor. This is how families and countries get out of poverty. In fact, no country in the last fifty years has emerged from poverty without expanding access to contraceptives.

It still shocks me sometimes that other people don’t feel the way I do about the dogs,” he said, “When I first started doing this, I was surprised that other people didn’t hear the dogs talking to them, you know? They tell you when they’re hungry, when they’re sad, when they’re happy. I mean, they’re just like us; they’re living, breathing beings who search for happiness just like we do. They want comfort. They want a nice place to sleep, good food, and treats. They want to be loved and wanted.” But you know, I’ve realized that people choose not to hear them. People are selfish and don’t want to see suffering. I mean, it’s easier just to get rid of them, not to feed them, to kick them when they get in the way. Then it doesn’t hurt to look at them, to hear them beg for help.

Maybe you could tell us how you and Jordan met, Nick.” All conversation at the table stopped. Frankly, Nick was surprised it had taken this long for someone to ask. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Jordan take a nervous sip of her wine. He knew this was the part of the evening she’d dreaded, the part where they told more lies to her friends. Perhaps he could help her out with that. “Jordan and I met two weeks ago, at her store,” he said. “On the night of the big snowstorm.” Pete chuckled. “You really must’ve been jonesing for wine to go out in that mess.” Nick reached across the table and linked his fingers through Jordan’s. “I think Fate had a higher purpose for bringing me to her store that night.” He winked at her. I’ve got this. Melinda melted. “That’s so sweet.” “Then what happened?” Corinne prompted. Nick faced Jordan’s friends. For her sake, he’d tell the truth—perhaps not the whole truth—but at least nothing but. “Well, I asked Jordan a few questions, some quips were exchanged, and I distinctly recall her making a sarcastic comment about chardonnay. I can’t tell you exactly what happened from there, but five days later I found myself at Xander Eckhart’s party drinking pink champagne.” Her friends laughed. Charles raised his glass. “That’s how it happens, Nick. A cute smile, a few clever words, and five years later you’re watching Dancing with the Stars on Monday nights instead of football.” “Hey, don’t knock it until you’ve tried it,” Pete said indignantly. As the group teased Pete, Nick felt Jordan squeeze his knee underneath the table. She spoke softly as she held his gaze. “Thank you.” It took far more effort than it should have to make his tone sound as cavalier as always. “Any time, Rhodes

He never comments or judges, instead listening and absorbing and never telling me anything personal in return. But I’ve discovered that you can learn a lot without words. And what I’ve learned is hard won, because – though he’s the closest thing I have to a friend here, and as far as I know, I’m his – I have no idea what he looks like beneath his hood. It sounds impossible. It ought to be; how can you call someone a friend, know them for so long and not know what they look like? Yet I don’t. I don’t know what colour his eyes are, or his hair. I know his mouth, and the point of his chin, and his neat teeth. Once I even saw the end of his nose when he tipped his head back to laugh. But that’s all. From our first meeting, to today, he has always, always been hooded, gloved and cloaked, and he’s never removed them, never even pushed them aside, whether we’re indoors or out. When I asked him why, he told me it was safer like that. For us both. And to not ask again. Mysterious boys are not as enjoyable in reality as they are in stories.

Nobody ever talked about what a struggle this all was. I could see why women used to die in childbirth. They didn't catch some kind of microbe, or even hemorrhage. They just gave up. They knew that if they didn't die, they'd be going through it again the next year, and the next. I couldn't understand how a woman might just stop trying, like a tired swimmer, let her head go under, the water fill her lungs. I slowly massaged Yvonne's neck, her shoulders, I wouldn't let her go under. She sucked ice through threadbare white terry. If my mother were here, she'd have made Melinda meek cough up the drugs, sure enough. "Mamacita, ay," Yvonne wailed. I didn't know why she would call her mother. She hated her mother. She hadn't seen her in six years, since the day she locked Yvonne and her brother and sisters in their apartment in Burbank to go out and party, and never came back. Yvonne said she let her boyfriends run a train on her when she was eleven. I didn't even know what that meant. Gang bang, she said. And still she called out, Mama. It wasn't just Yvonne. All down the ward, they called for their mothers. ... I held onto Yvonne's hands, and I imagined my mother, seventeen years ago, giving birth to me. Did she call for her mother?...I thought of her mother, the one picture I had, the little I knew. Karin Thorvald, who may or may not have been a distant relation of King Olaf of Norway, classical actress and drunk, who could recite Shakespeare by heart while feeding the chickens and who drowned in the cow pond when my mother was thirteen. I couldn't imagine her calling out for anyone. But then I realized, they didn't mean their own mothers. Not those weak women, those victims. Drug addicts, shopaholics, cookie bakers. They didn't mean the women who let them down, who failed to help them into womanhood, women who let their boyfriends run a train on them. Bingers and purgers, women smiling into mirrors, women in girdles, women in barstools. Not those women with their complaints and their magazines, controlling women, women who asked, what's in it for me? Not the women who watched TV while they made dinner, women who dyed their hair blond behind closed doors trying to look twenty-three. They didn't mean the mothers washing dishes wishing they'd never married, the ones in the ER, saying they fell down the stairs, not the ones in prison saying loneliness is the human condition, get used to it. They wanted the real mother, the blood mother, the great womb, mother of a fierce compassion, a woman large enough to hold all the pain, to carry it away. What we needed was someone who bled, someone deep and rich as a field, a wide-hipped mother, awesome, immense, women like huge soft couches, mothers coursing with blood, mothers big enough, wide enough, for us to hide in, to sink down to the bottom of, mothers who would breathe for is when we could not breathe anymore, who would fight for us, who would kill for us, die for us. Yvonne was sitting up, holding her breath, eyes bulging out. It was the thing she should not do. "Breathe," I said in her ear. "Please, Yvonne, try." She tried to breathe, a couple of shallow inhalations, but it hurt too much. She flopped back on the narrow bed, too tired to go on. All she could do was grip my hand and cry. And I thought of the way the baby was linked to her, as she was linked to her mother, and her mother, all the way back, insider and inside, knit into a chain of disaster that brought her to this bed, this day. And not only her. I wondered what my own inheritance was going to be. "I wish I was dead," Yvonne said into the pillowcase with the flowers I'd brought from home. The baby came four hours later. A girl, born 5:32 PM.

I should know; perfectionism has always been a weakness of mine. Brene' Bown captures the motive in the mindset of the perfectionist in her book Daring Greatly: "If I look perfect and do everything perfectly, I can avoid or minimize the painful feelings of shame, judgment, and blame." This is the game, and I'm the player. Perfectionism for me comes from the feelings that I don't know enough. I'm not smart enough. Not hardworking enough. Perfectionism spikes for me if I'm going into a meeting with people who disagree with me, or if I'm giving a talk to experts to know more about the topic I do … when I start to feel inadequate and my perfectionism hits, one of the things I do is start gathering facts. I'm not talking about basic prep; I'm talking about obsessive fact-gathering driven by the vision that there shouldn't be anything I don't know. If I tell myself I shouldn't overprepare, then another voice tells me I'm being lazy. Boom. Ultimately, for me, perfectionism means hiding who I am. It's dressing myself up so the people I want to impress don't come away thinking I'm not as smart or interesting as I thought. It comes from a desperate need to not disappoint others. So I over-prepare. And one of the curious things I've discovered is that what I'm over-prepared, I don't listen as well; I go ahead and say whatever I prepared, whether it responds to the moment or not. I miss the opportunity to improvise or respond well to a surprise. I'm not really there. I'm not my authentic self… If you know how much I am not perfect. I am messy and sloppy in so many places in my life. But I try to clean myself up and bring my best self to work so I can help others bring their best selves to work. I guess what I need to role model a little more is the ability to be open about the mess. Maybe I should just show that to other people. That's what I said in the moment. When I reflected later I realized that my best self is not my polished self. Maybe my best self is when I'm open enough to say more about my doubts or anxieties, admit my mistakes, confess when I'm feeling down. The people can feel more comfortable with their own mess and that's needs your culture to live in that. That was certainly the employees' point. I want to create a workplace where everyone can bring the most human, most authentic selves where we all expect and respect each other's quirks and flaws and all the energy wasted in the pursuit of perfection is saved and channeled into the creativity we need for the work that is a cultural release impossible burdens and lift everyone up.