When 'The Awakening' was published it was considered so scandalous it was banned in the author's home-town library, and she herself was barred from the Fine Arts Club in the same city. What the novel has to offer, among other things, is honesty.
Why was it, she asked herself, that "animals can sometimes subdue their predatory ways in only a few months, while humans, despite centuries of refinement, can quickly grow more savage than any beast?
Max Cherry: Jackie wants to give it to you herself, she wants to collect her ten percent. She also wants to explain why she had to hang on to it. Ordell Robbie: Oh, and I want to hear that shit!
Storekeeper: [to Tae-Sik Cha] Kids will learn from their mistakes. Parenting isn't just giving birth. She's always by herself. Bring her around more often, like the other dads. It's on me.
Satine: [to herself, singing] When will I begin to live again? One day I'll fly away... leave all this to yesterday. Why live life from dream to dream, and dread the day when dreaming ends.
Dr. Finkelstein: Sally! You came back. Sally: I had to. Dr. Finkelstein: For this. [holds Sally's detatched arm; she causes it to wave at herself] Sally: [smiles] Yes. Dr. Finkelstein: Shall we, then?
[Kitty serves herself a helping of the uncooked vegetables from the local cholera-infected crop] Walter Fane: Are you looking to kill yourself? [Kitty eats the vegetables with a contemptous smirk. Walter then serves himself and eats his in the same m...
Shrek: Fiona? Are you all right? [Fiona looks at herself, and sees she is still an ogre] Princess Fiona: Yes. But, I don't understand. I'm supposed to be beautiful. Shrek: But you are beautiful. Donkey: I was hoping this would be a happy ending... [S...
I pity the young woman who will attempt to insinuate herself between my mama's boy and me. I sympathize with the monumental nature of her task. It will take a crowbar, two bulldozers and half a dozen Molotov cocktails to pry my Oedipus and me loose f...
Woman is not born: she is made. In the making, her humanity is destroyed. She becomes symbol of this, symbol of that: mother of the earth, slut of the universe; but she never becomes herself because it is forbidden for her to do so.
Before she can stop herself, she thinks about desire, how it lives within you and yet is separate, surfacing when it chooses, without permission, in the harsh afternoon light, at the moment when you least expect to find it.
I believe that true identity is found . . . in creative activity springing from within. It is found, paradoxically, when one loses oneself. Woman can best refind herself in some kind of creative activity of her own.
I was raised primarily by women. I had a mother who almost killed herself to survive, I had a sister who was eight years older who was like a second mother, and my mother had two sisters. In the environment I grew up in, I heard a lot of female persp...
You want to hear it? Fine. It’s a simple story really, about a pretty girl who was pretty stupid. She let a man touch her because she was scared to say no, and then she told her parents because she was scared to say nothing. Then they were scared t...
Kipster is a perfectly valid word,” Wendy argued, about to write down her score on the little notepad that had come with the game. “Okay, so what does it mean?” Mandy wanted to know. Wendy struggled to come up with an answer, and finally just c...
But she was so happy in her gilded cage, wasn’t she? She ate well, slept well, enjoyed herself She lacked nothing. And then, look, a bunch of mental cases turn her away from her happiness and send her to -- how did you put it? -- to ‘blow herself...
Jay: I dunno dude, that Caitlin chick's nice, but I've seen that Veronica girl doing shit for you all the time. I saw her rubbing your back, fucking comes and brings you food. Didn't I see her change your tire once? Dante Hicks: Hey-hey, you know, I ...
This murdered girl troubles me. After the first shock, nobody at school says much about her. Even Cordelia does not want to talk about her. It’s as if this girl has done something shameful, herself, by being murdered.
When it was cooler, Trazada made a simple meal of sausage, cheese, and bread. She had schooled herself to wait dinner until hunger urged her to eat; it gave seasoning to poor food that no spice could furnish. ("The Generalissimo's Butterfly")
And waking, once again, face smudged into Andrea's couch, the red quilt humped around her shoulders, smelling coffee, while Andrea hummed some Tokyo pop song to herself in the next room, dressing, in a gray morning of Paris rain.
No one else could see all the bodies she’d left behind, but they were there, looking at her. Or maybe that was just her, looking at herself, and not liking what she saw. Knowing she could never escape her own judging gaze.
