Sorority Quotes

Oh," he said, knocking a red ball into a hole. "It's you." "You were expecting someone else?" I asked. "Am I interrupting your social calender?" I made a big show of glancing around the empty room. "I don't want to keep you from the mob of fans beating down your door." "Hey, a guy can hope. I mean, it's not impossible that a car full of scantily clad sorority girls might break down outside and need my help.

Hey, a guy can hope. I mean, it’s not impossible that a car full of scantily clad sorority girls might break down outside and need my help.” “That’s true,” I said. “Maybe I can put a sign out front that says, ‘ATTENTION ALL GIRLS: FREE HELP HERE.’” “‘ATTENTION ALL HOT GIRLS,’” he corrected, straightening up. “Right,” I said, trying not to roll my eyes. “That’s an important distinction.” He pointed at me with the pool stick. “Speaking of hot, I like that uniform.” This time, I did roll my eyes.

Anyway, I was the one in real danger. I got cornered by a pack of wild sorority girls in the food court. Apparently it's mating season.

He alternated between ignoring me and shooting me disdainful looks that clearly said “Who is this ugly off-brand non-sorority girl ruining our homo-erotic bro-times?

I've tried to make sense of how someone who didn't stalk his victims in advance ended up going after the best and the brightest. And I think that's it, the thing they all had in common - a light that outshone his. He targets college campuses and sorority houses because he's looking for the cream of the crop. He wants to extinguish us - we are the ones who remind him that he's not that smart, not that good-looking, and there's nothing particularly special about him.

The prettier the wine bottle, the higher the likelihood sorority girls will buy it.

Although I get a lot of specialty services like wraps, scrubs, and mustache removal, my favorite is the simple manicure/pedicure. They work on your hands and feet at the same time while you sit in a vibrating chair. I call it the sorority girls version of a threesome.

Happy" was a word for sorority girls and clowns, and those were two distinctly fucked-up groups of people.

Religions and states and classes and tribes and nations do not have to work or argue for their adherents and subjects. They more or less inherit them. Against this unearned patrimony there have always been speakers and writers who embody Einstein's injunction to 'remember your humanity and forget the rest.' It would be immodest to claim membership in this fraternity/sorority, but I hope not to have done anything to outrage it. Despite the idiotic sneer that such principles are 'fashionable,' it is always the ideas of secularism, libertarianism, internationalism, and solidarity that stand in need of reaffirmation.

Yes, she liked to get dressed up, but she called sorority girls “sorostitutes” and fraternity guys “fratilos.” She labeled them “group thinkers” and claimed they suffered from a herd mentality.

Fraternize means to behave like a brother. Luke told me that. He said there was no corresponding word that meant to behave like a sister. Sororize, it would have to be, he said. From the Latin.

...Stop worrying about her." "Women must worry about other women," she snapped. "God knows men won't do it." - Annabelle.

Yeah. She'd manipulated the second most powerful vampire in town into taking her side against a psycho bitch-queen sorority girl. She'd talked rationally about putting people's brains into computers. This was a normal day. No wonder she was screwed up.

If I were a lesbian and had a thing for narcissistic ex-sorority girls? I’d totally do me." Bitter is the New Black: Confessions of a Condescending, Egomaniacal, Self-Centered Smart-Ass, or Why You Should Never Carry a Prada Bag to the Unemployment Office: A Memoir

You were kind of mean to Brittany,” Holly said. “Was I? Trying to be protective, I guess. I have a problem with cheerleaders, sorority sisters, gangs, committees, groups, anything pack-related.” She shrugged. “Yeah, you’re not really a joiner.” I was never much for cheerleaders or jocks myself, especially in high school. I always knew that kind of popularity was short term, but when you’re a teenager it seemed like the most important thing in the world. But Holly was only twelve.

The ability for a woman to be free is connected with her ability to love another woman.

I don't see what women see in other women," I told Doctor Nolan in my interview that noon. "What does a woman see in a woman that she can't see in a man?" Doctor Nolan paused. Then she said, "Tenderness." That shut me up.

There wasn't even enough meat to make proper fun of [....] I keep waiting for somebody else to come on TV, maybe a cabinet member, to read the real speech, the one that tells us ... I dunno ... stuff. Seriously, sorority girls have done the Walk of Shame home from frat parties feeling more satisfied.

When you spend any time at all paying attention to the proclivities of the natural world, you realize that nature has no problem including in its sorority the dead, dying, and ailing as fully as the lovely, healthy, and whole.

She drew herself up and crossed her arms over her chest. “So Buck can enjoy sitting in a cell contemplating how he blew up his life. That dickwad hurt two people sitting at this table. And you’re worried about who’ll look bad if they tell? Screw that. Dean and D.J. and Kennedy and every frat boy on this campus can all go fuck themselves. Are we sisters or not?

With the Smithies, it was different. There was sometimes no telling where one of them began and the others left off.

A stampede of footsteps came pounding up, accompanied by the yodeling howls of two very excited pugs. They loved drama like blonde haired sorority sisters.

snuggling in bed at our sorority house, reading smut books, and avoiding social gatherings”.

Fraternize means to behave like a brother. Luke told me that. He said there was no corresponding word that meant to behave like a sister. Sororize, it would have to be, he said.

Fraternize means to behave like a brother. Luke told me that. He said there was no corresponding word that meant to behave like a sister. Sororize, it would have to be, he said. From

This is a part of post-college life that nobody ever warns you about. Your social life is no longer dropped into your lap by virtue of shared classes and extracurricular activities. Relationships, whether with friends, family, or romantic partners—from here on out, they’re going to take a lot more work. No more built-in friends at the sorority, or hollering down the stairs when I need my mom. It’s certainly not going to be as easy to meet guys now that I’m done with school. It’s not like I can just chat up the cute guy in econ class anymore.

I don't want to keep you from the mob of fans beating down the door." "Hey, a guy can hope. I mean, it's not impossible that a car full of scantily clad sorority girls might break down outside and need my help." "That's true," I said. "Maybe I can put a sign out from that says, 'ATTENTION ALL GIRLS:FREE HELP HERE.'" "'ATTENTION ALL HOT GIRLS,'" he corrected, straightening up. "Right," I said, trying not to roll my eyes. "That's an important distinction." He pointed at me with the pool stick. "Speaking of hot, I like that uniform." This time I did roll me eyes.

Her problem is with pretty,” Tennyson said. "She thinks I’ll need all these dresses in college. Like I would ever in a billion years pledge a sorority. I’ll pack a few of these to be ironic, though. I can wear them to, like, truck stops at night with mascara running down my cheeks and stuff.

(At a health and fitness fair) Though normally superconfident, I am not prepared for the judgmental stares of the ultrafit. They don't know me and have no idea of my prowess in the boardroom. They're unfamiliar with my shoe collection and unaware that I live in the Dot-Com Palace. And they didn't notice me pulling up in the Caddy. All they can see is how much space I occupy. With each step I take, I feel cellulite blossoming on my arms, my stomach, my calves. Stop it! I think my chin just multiplied and my thighs inflated. No! Deflate! Deflate! And I'm pretty sure I can see my own ass out of the corner of my eye. Gah! Cut it out!! Am I imagining things, or do my footsteps sound like those of the giant who stomped through the city in the beginning of Underdog? And how did I go from aging-but-still-kind-of-hot ex-sorority girl to horrific, stompy cartoon monster in less than an hour? My sleek and sexy python sandals have morphed into cloven hooves by the time I reach the line for the race packet. While I wait, the air is abuzz with tales of other marathons while many sets of eyes cut in my direction. Eventually an asshat in a JUST DO IT T-shirt asks me, "How's your training going?

Maureen Dowd - that catty, third-rate, wannabe sorority queen. She's such an empty vessel. One pleasure of reading the New York Times online is that I never have to see anything written by Maureen Dowd! I ignore her hypertext like spam for penis extenders.

So what if they weren’t as happy as they’d ever been? They were adults, with a nearly grown child. “Happy” was a word for sorority girls and clowns, and those were two distinctly fucked-up groups of people. They were just wading through the muck like everyone else.

just don’t get why a pretty girl like you would do this to herself, he said. I wanted to ask, What does pretty have to do with it?

—Llegar al mundo e irse no son cosas que haya que hacer solas. —La mujer de los panes toma aire para seguir hablando—: Si las mujeres nos juntamos, ahí está nuestra fuerza.

and no, no, I didn’t think it was a coincidence SS was short for sorority sister.

She’s probably shocked to see me at a party, instead of my typical “snuggling in bed at our sorority house, reading smut books, and avoiding social gatherings”.

She was the sweetheart queen, sorority president. Boys trailed her like a tail on a kite,

Aren’t the gorges beautiful? This year, two girls jumped into one holding hands. They didn’t get into the sorority they wanted. They wanted Tri-Delt.

I know many friends who loved their sororities. I wasn’t traumatized. I was just bored.

I was with my tribe of tri-Delt sorority girls, and we were all having sex with mermen. It was nice feeling, like I was part of something larger than myself.

How the three of them had met at Jacy’s sorority, where they all slung hash,

She no longer looked like herself: diligent, plump, prim. She looked like a surfer girl or a sorority sister, one of those quivering dewy creatures she had always silently disliked.

Social media has put an incredible pressure on the Facebook generation. We’ve made our lives so public to one another, and as a result we feel pressure to live up to a certain ideal version of ourselves. On social media, everyone is happy, and popular, and successful—or, at least, we think we need to look like we are. No matter how well off we are, how thin or pretty, we have our issues and insecurities. But none of that shows up online. We don’t like to reveal our weaknesses on social media. We don’t want to appear unhappy, or be a drag. Instead, we all post rose-colored versions of ourselves. We pretend we have more money than we do. We pretend we are popular. We pretend our lives are great. Your status update says I went to a totally awesome party last night! It won’t mention that you drank too much and puked and humiliated yourself in front of a girl you like. It says My sorority sisters are the best! It doesn’t say I feel lonely and don’t think they accept me. I’m not saying everyone should post about having a bad time. But pretending everything is perfect when it’s not doesn’t help anyone. The danger of these kinds of little white lies is that, in projecting the happiness and accomplishments we long for, we’re setting impossible standards for ourselves and others to live up to.

Fraternize means to behave like a brother. Luke told me that. He said there was no corresponding word that meant to behave like a sister. Sororize, it would have to be, he said. From the Latin. He

Just as presidents are part of a lifelong club, so too are first ladies: presidents are members of the world’s most selective fraternity, and first ladies are members of the world’s most elite sorority.

And it feels very similar to rushing a sorority; the planned conversation with the more important sorority sisters, always pretty, usually white, who've already gone through a list of photos and have their favorites pegged and the answers to their questions preloaded. "Oh, no way! You were a cheerleader, too?! So was I! You'll fit in so well in our house!" Meanwhile, we, of source, knew she was a cheerleader because we spent days studying the rushee's photos and applications, and we already knew which ones we'd be attacking. And here I am, in my mid-thirties, re-creating the same behavior to sell a similar promise of a different sisterhood.

I’ve tried to make sense of how someone who didn’t stalk his victims in advance ended up going after the best and the brightest. And I think that’s it, the thing they all had in common—a light that outshone his. He targets college campuses and sorority houses because he’s looking for the cream of the crop. He wants to extinguish us—we are the ones who remind him that he’s not that smart, not that good-looking, that there’s nothing particularly special about him.

The horror movies made in the ’70s didn’t have rules and often lacked the reassuring backstory that explained the evil away or turned it into a postmodern meta-joke. Why did the killer stalk the sorority girls in Black Christmas? Why was Regan possessed in The Exorcist? Why was the shark cruising around Amity? Where did Carrie White’s powers come from? There were no answers, just as there were no concrete connect-the-dot justifications of daily life’s randomness: shit happens, deal with it, stop whining, take your medicine, grow the fuck up.

..it’s not impossible that a car full of scantily clad sorority girls might break down outside and need my help.” “That’s true,” I said. “Maybe I can put a sign out front that says, ‘ATTENTION ALL GIRLS: FREE HELP HERE.’” “‘ATTENTION ALL HOT GIRLS,’” he corrected, straightening up.

..it’s not impossible that a car full of scantily clad sorority girls might break down outside and need my help.” “That’s true,” I said. “Maybe I can put a sign out front that says, ‘ATTENTION ALL GIRLS: FREE HELP HERE.’” “‘ATTENTION ALL HOT GIRLS,’” he corrected, straightening up.

In 315 CE, for example, the Synod of Neocaesarea (now Niksar, Turkey) banned men from marrying the wife of a dead brother—no levirate marriage. A decade later, in 325, the Council of Nicaea prohibited men from marrying the sister of a dead wife—no sororate marriage—and from marrying Jews, pagans, and heretics.

Si eres hombre y estás leyendo esto, no te sientas atacado ni nervioso, que nosotras estrechemos lazos no tiene nada que ver contigo ni con nuestra relación con los hombres, es algo independiente, algo nuestro. Igual que existe el compadreo (del latín pater, «padre») también existe la sororidad (del latín soror, «hermana»).

This is the Marina. This is where you go between the fraternity or sorority house and your first divorce. Look around, except for our waitress, who I guarantee doesn’t live in this neighborhood, it’s all people who are completely self-absorbed without a shred of self-awareness.” “Wow, that’s harsh,” Mike said. “You haven’t served them,” Lily said.

Malory! You've got a chipmunk on your pussy!

Honey, people never grow up. Adulthood is just high school with Restylane. You of all people should know that by now. Toodles, bitch!

slam dunk.

William Congreve. Heav’n has no rage, like love to hatred turn’d, Nor hell a fury, like a woman scorn’d.

My career has had its low points. But I can’t remember a day more rock bottom than this one.

They love laboring over every speck of minutiae that goes with their job, but for us, it’s the homicide detective equivalent of watching paint dry.

Tonight, I was hoping you would feed me. And then I was planning on fucking you to sleep.

Why did the killer stalk the sorority girls in Black Christmas? Why was Regan possessed in The Exorcist? Why was the shark cruising around Amity? Where did Carrie White’s powers come from? There were no answers, just as there were no concrete connect-the-dot justifications of daily life’s randomness: shit happens, deal with it, stop whining, take your medicine, grow the fuck up.

When I couldn’t take the hunger anymore, I called Taylor and told her everything. She screamed so loud, I had to hold the phone away from my ear. She came right over with a black-bean burrito and a strawberry-banana smoothie. She kept shaking her head and saying, “That Zeta Phi slut.” “It wasn’t just her, it was him, too,” I said, between bites of my burrito. “Oh, I know. Just you wait. I’m gonna drag my nails across his face when I see him. I’ll leave him so scarred, no girl will ever hook up with him again.” She inspected her manicured nails like they were artillery. “When I go to the salon tomorrow, I’m gonna tell Danielle to make them sharp.” My heart swelled. There are some things only a friend who’s known you your whole life can say, and instantly, I felt a little better. “You don’t have to scar him.” “But I want to.” She hooked her pinky finger with mine. “Are you okay?” I nodded. “Better, now that you’re here.” When I was sucking down the last of my smoothie, Taylor asked me, “Do you think you’ll take him back?” I was surprised and really relieved not to hear any judgement to her voice. “What would you do?” I asked her. “It’s up to you.” “I know, but…would you take him back?” “Under ordinary circumstances, no. If some guy cheated on me while we were on a break, if he so much as looked at another girl, no. He’d be donzo.” She chewed on her straw. “But Jeremy’s not some guy. You have a history together.” “What happened to all that talk about scarring him?” “Don’t get it twisted, I hate him to death right now. He effed up in a colossal way. But he’ll never be just some guy, not to you. That’s a fact.” I didn’t say anything. But I knew she was right. “I could still round up my sorority sisters and go slash his tires tonight.” Taylor bumped my shoulder. “Hmm? Whaddyathink?” She was trying to make me laugh. It worked. I laughed for the first time in what felt like a long time.

I don’t believe in pretending to be cool anymore. If I did I would tell you that I enjoy two fingers of nicely aged bourbon, neat with a water back. In real life I drink daiquiris and Skinnygirl margaritas and shit like cupcake-flavored vodka. Also I really love beer, but not any of the impressive kinds that you order to show how exceptional you are. I basically drink like a sorority pledge.

I swear, I stick my foot in my mouth more times than I’d like to count with this girl and the reminder of her earlier suggestion comes to mind, but my foot is going nowhere near my ass. Shuddering, the memory of that sorority girl sticking her finger in that place makes me cringe. Sure, I know some guys are cool with that and they like it, but I swear my cock deflated the moment she touched me there. Never fucking again.

I kept my antennae up for intel, but the only subject of conversation was Dorothy. Which should have been a good thing, considering that she was the one I was really here to learn about. Unfortunately, no one was sharing any useful information. It was all about how beautiful Dorothy was, or how kind she was, or how lucky we were to be working for the greatest person in all of Oz. It was weird. They were like a creepy, overeager maid sorority.

I was just trying to demonstrate to the students of Rowland University that Rowland University was not infinite. It had taken me a long time to figure out what the problem was, but one day I realized that the students at Rowland University thought that Rowland University was infinite. Infinite bookstore. Infinite fraternities and sororities. Infinite sports teams. Infinite snack shop. Infinite Homecoming. Infinite graduation. Infinite prospects.

But those moments I spent with her on the terrace... I will never forget them. We played like little girls. We saw colours come vividly to life before us. We joked. We laughed. We were us. In those moments when we threw mugfulls of water into the open space, I saw that we were two faces to one soul. She, bucolic. I, urban. She, conventional. I, modern. She, her. I, me. Sisters, the members of a sorority of pain. But the problems were one, real, single.

I fell asleep at nine that night and didn’t move until nine the next morning, waking up still dressed and wrapped like a pupa in the Park Hyatt’s comforter. Marlboro Man wasn’t in the room; I was disoriented and dizzy, stumbling to the bathroom like a drunk sorority girl after a long night of partying. But I didn’t look like a sorority girl. I looked like hell, pale and green and drawn; Marlboro Man was probably on a flight back to the States, I imagined, after having woken up and seen what he’d been sleeping to all night.

You wouldn’t think so, but . . . well. You were . . . amazing, throwing that fire like some kind of ancient warrior goddess.” Annoyed, I turned away. “Stop making fun of me.” He caught my arm and pulled me back toward him. “I am absolutely serious.” I swallowed, speechless for a moment. All I was aware of was how close we were, that he was holding me to him with only a few inches between us. Almost as close as at the sorority. “I’m not a warrior or a goddess,” I managed at last. Adrian leaned closer. “As far as I’m concerned, you’re both.

The social codes are different, distinctly preppy, fraternity-sorority, hip, flip, fast-and-cute, nauseating, and artificial. I have no doubt that the majority of these people are interesting, likeable, intelligent people. Unfortunately, they've been taught not to show it. The problem lies in socializing. When these people socialize, they don a common "mask." They talk a certain way (hip, flip) act a certain way, do certain things, all of which have been defined as socially acceptable. By acting in such a way, one makes "friends." With time, friends use their masks less and less, and a true, deep friendship results.

My first impression of him was that he was free spirited, clever, funny. That proved to be completely inaccurate. We left the party together and walked around for hours, lied to each other about our happy lives, ate pizza at midnight, took the Staten Island Ferry back and forth and watched the sun rise. I gave him my phone number at the dorm. By the time he finally called me, two weeks later, I’d become obsessed with him. He kept me on a long, tight leash for months—expensive meals, the occasional opera or ballet. He took my virginity at a ski lodge in Vermont on Valentine’s Day. It wasn’t a pleasurable experience, but I trusted he knew more about sex than I did, so when he rolled off and said, “That was amazing,” I believed him. He was thirty-three, worked for Fuji Bank at the World Trade Center, wore tailored suits, sent cars to pick me up at my dorm, then the sorority house sophomore year, wined and dined me, and asked for head with no shame in the back of cabs he charged to the company account. I took this as proof of his masculine value. My “sisters” all agreed; he was “suave.” And I was impressed by how much he liked talking about his emotions, something I’d never seen a man do. “My mom’s a pothead now, and that’s why I have this deep sadness.” He took frequent trips to Tokyo for work and to San Francisco to visit his twin sister. I suspected she discouraged him from dating me.

Indirect aggression is characterized by a clique of relatively powerless (compared with their male counterparts) girls or women who exert power “indirectly” by bullying, gossiping about, slandering, and shaming one girl or woman so that she will be shunned by her female intimates, thrown out of her college sorority, perhaps fired from her job, divorced by her husband, and definitely dropped from the A-list of partygoers. Gossip is a chief weapon of indirect aggression. Slandering another girl or woman (“she’s a slut,” “she’s … different,” “she really thinks she’s something”) leads to her being ostracized by her female friends and peers, a punishment that girls and women experience as being put into solitary confinement or as a social death.

Skye snorted. “Parents are so lame sometimes. Mine think I’m a virgin. They also think I’d never drink beer because I’m a calorie freak. No one is that much of a calorie freak.” Frowning as she yanked me along, I wondered about the calories in those tacos. Skye must have sensed my concerns because she snorted again. “The freshman fifteen is expected. If we don’t pack on a little weight, people will think we’re full of ourselves. Those girls over there,” she said, waving her hand in the direction of a bevy of pretty sorority girls. “They’re obsessed with being hot. Unfortunately, while you can snag a man by being hot, you can’t keep him. To keep them, you have to be confident and I am. I’m just confident enough to pack on a few pounds from eating tacos. I’m a keeper

The Pi Betas had accepted the fact that Rose was Mexican, but it was obvious they would just as soon ignore it. And they seemed to assume Rose wanted to do that, too. The other girls might not be overtly disturbed by the fact that Rose was a chicana, but they certainly were not going to encourage her to explore her heritage. No, if Rose joined the Pi Betas, she would have to deny the biggest part of herself. She would have to become completely American.

Janitorial" All morning he drifts the spacious lawns like a gleaner, picking up this and that, the summer clouds immense and building toward afternoon, when the heat drives him under the shade of the oak trees in the quad and then along cool corridors inside to pull down last term's flyers For the chamber recital, the poetry reading, the lecture on the ethics of cloning, the dinner with some ambassador, the debate between Kant and Heidegger, the frat party, the sorority party, the kegger, the weekend Bergman festival, the Wednesday screening of Dumb and Dumber. He says hello to fine young ladies, and tries not to dwell on their halter tops, their tanned thighs, shorts up to here. At five he climbs into an old, dumpster-colored olds, lights up and heads home across the barge-ridden river in its servitude to East St. Louis, where you know this poem—glib, well-meaning, trivial-- grows tongue-tied, and cannot follow.

I fell asleep at nine that night and didn’t move until nine the next morning, waking up still dressed and wrapped like a pupa in the Park Hyatt’s comforter. Marlboro Man wasn’t in the room; I was disoriented and dizzy, stumbling to the bathroom like a drunk sorority girl after a long night of partying. But I didn’t look like a sorority girl. I looked like hell, pale and green and drawn; Marlboro Man was probably on a flight back to the States, I imagined, after having woken up and seen what he’d been sleeping to all night. I made myself take a warm shower, even though the beautiful marble bathroom was spinning like a top. The water hitting my back made me feel better. When I came out of the bathroom, refreshed and wearing the Park Hyatt robe, Marlboro Man was sitting on the bed, reading an Australian paper, which he’d picked up down the street along with some orange juice and a cinnamon roll for me in hopes it would make me feel better. “C’mere,” he said, patting the empty spot on the bed next to him. I obliged. I curled up next to him. Like clockwork our arms and legs began to wrap around each other until we were nothing but a mass of flesh again. We stayed there for almost an hour--him rubbing my back and asking me if I was okay…me, dying from bliss with each passing minute and trying to will away the nausea, which was still very much hovering over our happiness.

Chubby: A regular-size person who could lose a few, for whom you feel affection. Chubster: An overweight, adorable child. That kid from Two and a Half Men for the first couple of years. Fatso: An antiquated term, really. In the 1970s, mean sorority girls would call a pledge this. Probably most often used on people who aren’t even really fat, but who fear being fat. Fatass: Not usually used to describe weight, actually. This deceptive term is more a reflection of one’s laziness. In the writers’ room of The Office, an upper-level writer might get impatient and yell, “Eric, take your fat ass and those six fatasses and go write this B-story! I don’t want to hear any more excuses why the plot doesn’t make sense!” Jabba the Hutt: Star Wars villain. Also, something you can call yourself after a particularly filling Thanksgiving dinner that your aunts and uncles will all laugh really hard at. Obese: A serious, nonpejorative way to describe someone who is unhealthily overweight. Obeseotron: A nickname you give to someone you adore who has just stepped on your foot accidentally, and it hurts. Alternatively, a fat robot. Overweight: When someone is roughly thirty pounds too heavy for his or her frame. Pudgy: See “Chubby.” Pudgo: See “Chubster.” Tub o’ Lard: A huge compliment given by Depression-era people to other, less skinny people. Whale: A really, really mean way that teen boys target teen girls. See the following anecdote.

A Lake Charles-based artist, Sally was a progressive Democrat who in 2016 primary favored Bernie Sanders. Sally's very dear friend and worl-traveling flight attendant from Opelousas, Louisiana, Shirley was an enthusiast for the Tea Party and Donald Trump. Both woman had joined sororities at LSU. Each had married, had three children, lived in homes walking distance apart in Lake Charles, and had keys to each other's houses. Each loved the other's children. Shirley knew Sally's parents and even consulted Sally's mother when the two go to "fussing to much." They exchanged birthday and Christmas gifts and jointly scoured the newspaper for notices of upcoming cultural events they had, when they were neighbors in Lake Charles, attended together. One day when I was staying as Shirley's overnight guest in Opelousas, I noticed a watercolor picture hanging on the guestroom wall, which Sally had painted as a gift for Shirley's eleven-year-old daughter, who aspired to become a ballerina. With one pointed toe on a pudgy, pastel cloud, the other lifted high, the ballerina's head was encircled by yellow star-like butterflies. It was a loving picture of a child's dream--one that came true. Both women followed the news on TV--Sally through MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, and Shirley via Fox News's Charles Krauthammer, and each talked these different reports over with a like-minded husband. The two women talk by phone two or three times a week, and their grown children keep in touch, partly across the same politcal divide. While this book is not about the personal lives of these two women, it couldn't have been written without them both, and I believe that their friendship models what our country itself needs to forge: the capacity to connect across difference.

Suddenly I realized I was standing on the hot wood of the dock, still touching elbows with Adam, staring at the skull-and-crossbones pendant. And when I looked up into his light blue eyes, I saw that he was staring at my neck. No. Down lower. “What’cha staring at?” I asked. He cleared his throat. “Tank top or what?” This was his seal of approval, as in, Last day of school or what? or, Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders or what? Hooray! He wasn’t Sean, but he was built of the same material. This was a good sign. I pumped him for more info, to make sure. “What about my tank top?” “You’re wearing it.” He looked out across the lake, showing me his profile. His cheek had turned bright red under his tan. I had embarrassed the wrong boy. Damn, it was back to the football T-shirt for me. No it wasn’t, either. I couldn’t abandon my plan. I had a fish to catch. “Look,” I told Adam, as if he hadn’t already looked. “Sean’s leaving at the end of the summer. Yeah, yeah, he’ll be back next summer, but I’m afraid I won’t be able to compete once he’s had a taste of college life and sorority girls. It’s now or never, and desperate times call for desperate tank tops.” Adam opened his mouth to say something. I shut him up by raising my hand. Imitating his deep boy-voice, I said, “I don’t know why you want to hook up with that jerk.” We’d had this conversation whenever we saw each other lately. I said in my normal voice, “I just do, okay? Let me do it, and don’t get in my way. Stay out of my net, little dolphin.” I bumped his hip with my hip. Or tried to, but he was a lot taller than me. I actually hit somewhere around his mid-thigh. He folded his arms, stared me down, and pressed his lips together. He tried to look grim. I could tell he was struggling not to laugh. “Don’t call me that.” “Why not?” “Dolphins don’t live in the lake,” he said matter-of-factly, as if this were the real reason. The real reason was that the man-child within him did not want to be called “little” anything. Boys were like that. I shrugged. “Fine, little brim. Little bass.” He walked toward the stairs. “Little striper.” He turned. “What if Sean actually asked you out?” I didn’t want to be teased about this. It could happen! “You act like it’s the most remote poss-“ “He has to ride around with the sunroof open just so he can fit his big head in the truck. Where would you sit?” “In his lap?” A look of disgust flashed across Adam’s face before he jogged up the stairs, his weight making the weathered planks creaked with every step.

If we consider the possibility that all women–from the infant suckling her mother’s breast, to the grown woman experiencing orgasmic sensations while suckling her own child, perhaps recalling her mother’s milk-smell in her own; to two women, like Virginia Woolf’s Chloe and Olivia, who share a laboratory; to the woman dying at ninety, touched and handled by women–exist on a lesbian continuum, we can see ourselves as moving in and out of this continuum, whether we identify ourselves as lesbian or not. It allows us to connect aspects of woman-identification as diverse as the impudent, intimate girl-friendships of eight- or nine-year-olds and the banding together of those women of the twelfth and fifteenth centuries known as Beguines who “shared houses, rented to one another, bequeathed houses to their room-mates … in cheap subdivided houses in the artisans’ area of town,” who “practiced Christian virtue on their own, dressing and living simply and not associating with men,” who earned their livings as spinners, bakers, nurses, or ran schools for young girls, and who managed–until the Church forced them to disperse–to live independent both of marriage and of conventual restrictions. It allows us to connect these women with the more celebrated “Lesbians” of the women’s school around Sappho of the seventh century B.C.; with the secret sororities and economic networks reported among African women; and with the Chinese marriage resistance sisterhoods–communities of women who refused marriage, or who if married often refused to consummate their marriages and soon left their husbands–the only women in China who were not footbound and who, Agnes Smedley tells us, welcomed the births of daughters and organized successful women’s strikes in the silk mills. It allows us to connect and compare disparate individual instances of marriage resistance: for example, the type of autonomy claimed by Emily Dickinson, a nineteenth-century white woman genius, with the strategies available to Zora Neale Hurston, a twentieth-century black woman genius. Dickinson never married, had tenuous intellectual friendships with men, lived self-convented in her genteel father’s house, and wrote a lifetime of passionate letters to her sister-in-law Sue Gilbert and a smaller group of such letters to her friend Kate Scott Anthon. Hurston married twice but soon left each husband, scrambled her way from Florida to Harlem to Columbia University to Haiti and finally back to Florida, moved in and out of white patronage and poverty, professional success and failure; her survival relationships were all with women, beginning with her mother. Both of these women in their vastly different circumstances were marriage resisters, committed to their own work and selfhood, and were later characterized as “apolitical ”. Both were drawn to men of intellectual quality; for both of them women provided the ongoing fascination and sustenance of life.

It’s my turn next, and I realize then that I never turned in the name of my escort--because I hadn’t planned on being here. I glance around wildly for Ryder, but he’s nowhere to be seen, swallowed up by the sea of people in cocktail dresses and suits. Crap. I thought he realized that escorting me on court was part of the deal, once I’d agreed to go. I guess he’d figured it’d be easier on me, what with the whole Patrick thing, if I was alone onstage. But I don’t want to be alone. I want Ryder with me. By my side, supporting me. Always. I finally spot him in the crowd--it’s not too hard, since he’s a head taller than pretty much everyone else--and our eyes meet. My stomach drops to my feet--you know, that feeling you get on a roller coaster right after you crest that first hill and start plummeting toward the ground. Oh my God, this can’t be happening. I’ve fallen in love with Ryder Marsden, the boy I’m supposed to hate. And it has nothing to do with his confession, his declaration that he loves me. Sure, it might have forced me to examine my feelings faster than I would have on my own, but it was there all along, taking root, growing, blossoming. Heck, it’s a full-blown garden at this point. “Our senior maid is Miss Jemma Cafferty!” comes the principal’s voice. “Jemma is a varsity cheerleader, a member of the Wheelettes social sorority, the French Honor Club, the National Honor Society, and the Peer Mentors. She’s escorted tonight by…ahem, sorry. I’m afraid there’s no escort, so we’ll just--” “Ryder Marsden,” I call out as I make my way across the stage. “I’m escorted by Ryder Marsden.” The collective gasp that follows my announcement is like something out of the movies. I swear, it’s just like that scene in Gone with the Wind where Rhett offers one hundred and fifty dollars in gold to dance with Scarlett, and she walks through the scandalized bystanders to take her place beside Rhett for the Virginia reel. Only it’s the reverse. I’m standing here doing the scandalizing, and Ryder’s doing the walking. “Apparently, Jemma’s escort is Ryder Marsden,” the principal ad-libs into the microphone, looking a little frazzled. “Ryder is…um…the starting quarterback for the varsity football team, and, um…in the National Honor Society and…” She trails off helplessly. “A Peer Mentor,” he adds helpfully as he steps up beside me and takes my hand. The smile he flashes in my direction as Mrs. Crawford places the tiara on my head is dazzling--way more so than the tiara itself. My knees go a little weak, and I clutch him tightly as I wobble on my four-inch heels. But here’s the thing: If the crowd is whispering about me, I don’t hear it. I’m aware only of Ryder beside me, my hand resting in the crook of his arm as he leads me to our spot on the stage beside the junior maid and her escort, where we wait for Morgan to be crowned queen. Oh, there’ll be hell to pay tomorrow. I have no idea what we’re going to tell our parents. Right now I don’t even care. Just like Scarlett O’Hara, I’m going to enjoy myself tonight and worry about the rest later. After all, tomorrow is another…Well, you know how the saying goes.

In college in Austin, I clocked the auburn-haired Asian kids who smoked Marlboro Light 100s and drove Mitsubishi 3000 GTs and Toyota Celicas with swooping, pearlized spoilers. They talked about AKs, were seemingly very good at pool, hailed mostly from Houston, and were decidedly cooler than church nerds or extracurricular-scholastic-group nerds. We didn’t interact much beyond the shade they’d throw as I walked by with my white boyfriend. “He’s half Mexican!” I wanted to tell them, but of course, that proved nothing. The other Asian crews were part of the Greek system, and I was leery of them as well. I knew them only because the housing administration of the University of Texas at Austin automatically roomed you with an Asian kid in a larger suite of Asian kids, and my Chinese suitemates rushed for Asian Panhellenic sororities. My roommate was a gorgeous socialite from Taiwan who spoke little English and dated guys who bought her clothes. She wore only Armani. We all kept a healthy distance.

I know about fraternal and sororal serial killers. Yes, FYI, sororal is the proper adjective. Anyway, I looked up family serial killers. There have been a few in history—the Benders of Kansas in the late 1800s, the Sawney Bean clan on which the movie The Hills Have Eyes is based.

Battle Bras Limited. Stone Hut Decor Emporium. Bedlam, Bloodbath, and Beyond.

In today’s information economy, the Greek world is using collaboration, innovation, and the mitigation of increasing liability issues to enhance the efficiency and evolution of Greek communities.

Just as I started to put the finishing touched on my lip gloss,

...love is tough. It endures tragedy and joy and monotony. Love makes you laugh...there was no fairness in love. That love is never concerned with what's fair or 'never having to say you're sorry' or all the other things we learn about love from songs and romantic poetry...Love is not rational and it is not just; it is not evenhanded and it is not balanced; it is not gentle or soft. Love brawls. Love consumes. Love inspires. Love gives life its shape and form and meaning. But it is not fair... Love stands when everything else falls apart.

Like all sororities, we find that half, maybe more, of the fun is in keeping others out. So much for the sweet part.

Alas! For impropriety, The guillotine of piety. To remedy society Indulge not to satiety In mirth and shameless gaiety. Choose sobering sobriety. Behave as if the deity Approaches in its mystery, And greet it with sonority. Let your especial history Be built upon sorority Whose Virtues do examplify, And Social Good thus multiply. Animals should be seen and not heard. Again, there was mumbling, but it was of a different nature now, a meaner key. Doctor Dillamond harrumphed and beat a cloven hoof against the floor, and was heard to say, "Well that's not poetry, that's propaganda, and it's not even good propaganda at that." Elphaba sidled over to Galinda's side with her chair under her arm, and plunked it down between Galinda and Shenshen. She put her bony behind on its slatted seat and leaned to Galinda and asked, "What do you make of this?" It was the first time Galinda had ever been addressed by Elphaba in public. Mortification bloomed. "I don't know," she said faintly, looking in the other direction. "It's cleverness, isn't it?" said Elphaba. "I mean that last line, you couldn't tell by that fancy accent whether it was meant to be Animals or animals. No wonder Dillamond's furious.

Sing a hymn to rectitude, Ye forward-thinking multitude. Advance in humble gratitude For strictest rules of attitude. To elevate the Common Good In Brotherhood and Sisterhood We celebrate authority. Fraternity, Sorority, United, pressing onward, we Restrict the ills of liberty. There is no numinosity Like Power's generosity In helping curb atrocity. Bear down on the rod and foil the child.

Galinda shivered, and was sure Madame Morrible felt it, knew it, but the Head never registered a sign of it. "But then, my use of sorority - how ironic. Too witty. Give a long enough time, of course, a wide enough frame, there is nothing said or done, ever, that isn't ironic in the end.

She was my age, or at least close to it. Dark hair that ran down her back in silky waves. An hourglass figure that was accentuated by her jeans and t-shirt. A tight little body begging to be touched. She was sexy in a way that seemed effortless, unlike most of the dolled-up sorority girls who usually flirted with me. Sarah was a fucking smokeshow.

Look around, tribes are everywhere, the wealthy join country clubs, the working class join unions. Poor urban kids join gangs and rich suburban kids join frats and sororities. Of course, the most prominent tribes of our day are defined by religion and ethnicity and it’s tearing our national civility apart. Think of an inner-city child born into horrible conditions. For him, a street gang may be the only path to survival, at least in the moment.

one in five, she’d say, that’s how many college women will be assaulted before they graduate; 74 percent, that’s how much more likely women in sororities are to be raped, and 300 percent—men in fraternities are three times more likely to commit rape. And at least one—at least one student will die this year in a hazing-related incident.

Chicago, I quickly learned, was an insular town, a sorority that I was not invited to pledge, with a population as icy as its winters.

Don’t you hate how Hollywood portrays sororities? It’s always drunk chicks having pillow fights in lingerie and chopping up mountains of cocaine and leading live sheep into wild parties. Give me a break.

She’s just supersophisticated and chic. That girl in the coffee shop (Fudge? Fudgie?) is so lucky to have this elegant woman as her mom. I feel like the sorority would love someone so cosmopolitan, and I hope Dean Grace agrees.

She probably assumed Janelle would mess up, too, because she’s so young, but she had no idea Janelle was competent. Dean Grace intentionally sabotaged the sororities so she could fill them with higher-paying students and get herself promoted to provost.

I am gobsmacked.” I smiled. It’s always a treat to meet a teenager who can express enthusiasm without using the word awesome.

Sophie lets out a sorority girl "Hell yeah!" and high fives Billy. I expect a forced fist bump from Ethan in response, so am surprised when I feel his lips come in for a soft landing on my cheek. "Hell yeah!" he whispers into my ear, laughing quietly.

There are plenty of qualified advisers, so don’t deviate from these requirements. Don’t hire someone to guide you on the path to economic security because they were in your sorority pledge class or they get great sports tickets. It will be the most expensive Knicks game you’ve ever been to. Here’s the critical thing about advisers. You aren’t paying them for investment returns. Over the long term, nobody beats the market. And if someone does have the secret to above-market returns, they aren’t going to be sharing it with you for a fixed percentage. You’re paying an adviser for planning, accountability, and confidence. The more wealth you accumulate and the more complex your life gets, the more valuable these services become.