Girls
Quotes - If girls can be anything, let them be anything
“All
the girls I had ever loved were mine. Each gave me what she alone had to give
and to each I gave what she alone knew how to take.”
―
Hermann Hesse
“I
have this dream that secretly all teenage girls feel exactly like me. And maybe
one day, when we all realize that we all feel the same, we can all stop
pretending to be something we're not.”
―
Zoe Sugg
“Are
we to deny our daughters the works of Oscar Wilde, Charles Dickens, John
Steinbeck or Shakespeare?....Where is the equality in banning girls from
enjoying wonderful works of literature?....What kind of society defines
suitable reading material by sex? This is indefensible censorship encouraging
ignorance and bias. [About Caitlin Moran's statement.]”
―
Diane Davies
“Women
are like shower faucets, you must treat them carefully, because if you do not,
it will either burn your balls or freeze your ass.”
―
M.F. Moonzajer
“life's
better with girls. boys need girls.”
―
Jodi Lynn Anderson, Tiger Lily
“...
just one more reminder that the rules are always different for girls, no matter
who they are and no matter what they do.”
―
Roxane Gay, Bad Feminist
“If
attempting to make the world a civilized one, makes you a bad woman in the eyes
of the dumb patriarchal society, then, by all means, be it.”
―
Abhijit Naskar, The Bengal Tigress: A Treatise on Gender Equality
“He
was a kind of éminence grise, a political leader, in a clandestine movement.
Everyone knows there are girls who go for that kind of thing. There are girls
who go for Huysmanists, for that matter. I once met a girl -- a pretty,
attractive girl -- who told me she fantasized about Jean-François Copé. It took
me several days to get over it. Really, with girls today, all bets are off.”
―
Michel Houellebecq, Soumission
“We
were girls in plaid skirts, loud and obnoxious, driving with the windows down.
Capable students, nailing honor roll every year, despite our reputation. We
were good kissers, decent dancers, fast with our hands. Desperate and dangerous.
A little loose, sure. But desirable. Everyone knew. We were the girls who
thought we were nothing if not this: a force, a flame, a million nerve ends
electric with appetite and not afraid.”
―
Colleen Curran
“Dex's
mother knew she should be afraid for her daughter. This, she'd been told, was
the tragedy of being a girl. To live in fear–it was the fate of any parent,
maybe, but the special provenance of a mother to a daughter, one woman raising
another, knowing too well what could happen. This was what lurked inside the
luckiest delivery rooms, the ones whose balloons screamed It's a girl!: pink
cigars and flowered onesies and fear.”
―
Robin Wasserman
“We’re
your daughters, mister. We’re your girlfriends, we’re your sisters, we’re your
precious baby girls. Goddammit, listen.”
―
Colleen Curran
“Leena
and Kelly Davidson have always lived a comfortable life. Neither girl has ever
held a job nor did they intend to get one. All they wanted was to live off
their parents’ money for their rest of their lives. What could be better than
that?”
―
Valenciya Lyons, Cami's Decision
“Ô,
the wine of a woman from heaven is sent,
more
perfect than all that a man can invent.”
―
Roman Payne, The Love of Europa: Limited Time Edition
“I'm
sorry I left without telling you," she says. "I wasn't ready. I
wanted it so much, and I wasn't ready for that.”
―
Nina LaCour, You Know Me Well
“As
an adult, most of my friends are women . . . they, too, had that moment when
they realized they were all the “other girls,” and that every girl in the world
is, too.”
―
Mara Wilson, Where Am I Now?
“If
girls can be anything, let them be anything.
This
is a book for any girl who ever felt she didn't fit in. You are not alone. You
come from a long line of bold, strong, fearless women. Glory in that.
This
is a book for anyone who ever underestimated a girl.”
―
Jason Porath
“A
guy never has a right to force a woman to have sex with him under any
circumstances. She should be able to say no at any point, and he must honor
that denial. It is criminal that so many girls and women are raped today. Fully
60 percent of all females who lose their virginity before age fifteen say that
their first sexual experience was forced! That is a tragedy with far-reaching
consequences.”
―
James C. Dobson, Life on the Edge: The Next Generation's Guide to a Meaningful
Future
“Someone's
boyfriend died in a rock-climbing accident in Switzerland: everyone gathered
around her, on fire with tragedy. Their dramatic shows up support underpinned with
jealousy- bad luck was rare enough to be glamorous.”
―
Emma Cline, The Girls
“Guys
who fuck a lot of women are happy motherfuckers but, girls who fuck a lot of
guys are miserable.”
―
Patrice O’Neal
“Girls
with poison necklaces
to
save themselves from torture.
Just
as women wear amulets
which
hold their rolled up fortunes
transcribed
on ola leaf.”
―
Michael Ondaatje, Handwriting
“Boys",
she says, "just aren't very good at being afraid.”
―
Maggie Stiefvater, The Scorpio Races
“GIRLS
OF THE WORLD, UNITE AND TAKE OVER! GROOVY ALL FEMALE WORLD NOW!!”
―
The Tick
“It
pained me to imagine how our twosome appeared to others, marked as those kind
of girls who belonged to each other. Those sexless fixtures of high school.”
―
Emma Cline, The Girls
“The
measure of any society is how it treats its women and girls.”
―
First Lady Michelle Obama
“A
lot of men wonder what a woman wants. The answer is power. There are many ways
to get it, but the easiest way is to tear other girls down. Any girl can play
that game, but there's no way to win, except not to play at all.”
―
Mara Wilson, Where Am I Now?
“I’m
going to say this once here, and then—because it is obvious—I will not repeat
it in the course of this book: not all boys engage in such behavior, not by a
long shot, and many young men are girls’ staunchest allies. However, every girl
I spoke with, every single girl—regardless of her class, ethnicity, or sexual
orientation; regardless of what she wore, regardless of her appearance—had been
harassed in middle school, high school, college, or, often, all three. Who,
then, is truly at risk of being “distracted” at school?
At
best, blaming girls’ clothing for the thoughts and actions of boys is
counterproductive. At worst, it’s a short step from there to “she was asking for
it.” Yet, I also can’t help but feel that girls such as Camila, who favors what
she called “more so-called provocative” clothing, are missing something. Taking
up the right to bare arms (and legs and cleavage and midriffs) as a feminist
rallying cry strikes me as suspiciously Orwellian. I recall the simple litmus
test for sexism proposed by British feminist Caitlin Moran, one that Camila
unconsciously referenced: Are the guys doing it, too? “If they aren’t,” Moran
wrote, “chances are you’re dealing with what we strident feminists refer to as
‘some total fucking bullshit.’”
So
while only girls get catcalled, it’s also true that only girls’ fashions urge
body consciousness at the very youngest ages. Target offers bikinis for
infants. The Gap hawks “skinny jeans” for toddlers. Preschoolers worship Disney
princesses, characters whose eyes are larger than their waists. No one is
trying to convince eleven-year-old boys to wear itty-bitty booty shorts or bare
their bellies in the middle of winter. As concerned as I am about the policing
of girls’ sexuality through clothing, I also worry about the incessant drumbeat
of self-objectification: the pressure on young women to reduce their worth to
their bodies and to see those bodies as a collection of parts that exist for
others’ pleasure; to continuously monitor their appearance; to perform rather
than to feel sensuality. I recall a conversation I had with Deborah Tolman, a
professor at Hunter College and perhaps the foremost expert on teenage girls’
sexual desire. In her work, she said, girls had begun responding “to questions
about how their bodies feel—questions about sexuality or arousal—by describing
how they think they look. I have to remind them that looking good is not a
feeling.”
―
Peggy Orenstein
