By Any Other Name

There was such magic in language. It could bring you to tears, pull you to the edge of your seat, make you sigh with relief. It could draw you out of the world when you needed to escape, and at other times hold up a looking glass to the world as it was.

Grief was the tax of having something precious.

When women's stories aren't told, it suggests that women's lives don't matter. You know what does matter. Women lifting up other women.

There once was a girl who became invisible so that her words might not be.

Because a man who argues is ambitious, but a woman who argues is just a bitch.

What was it about a woman’s voice that was so terrifying to a man? Was it the thought that a lesser creature might have intelligence or agency?

Explosives. Opioids. Nuclear weapons. None of them could hold a candle to hope, the most dangerous commodity in the world.

You have to let a bit of yourself bleed into your work.” And therein lay the problem: you couldn’t bleed without feeling the sting of the cut.

It does not matter what you see when you look at me, because you will never know me the way I know myself. And even if I am the only person in the world with that knowledge, it does not make it any less real.

She did not understand why a woman’s accomplishment had to come at the price of a man’s worth—as if there were a finite amount of success in the universe, as if letting another into that sacred space meant someone already there would be evicted.

What do you say when you know your words will be your last? I was here. I mattered.

being remembered by many was far less important than being remembered by a few who mattered.

Men believed that women were meant to exist on the fringes of their lives, instead of being the main characters in their own stories. But why would God have given her a voice if it wasn’t meant to be used?

That’s why I didn’t tell you. I didn’t know how.” Her father rubbed his hand over his jaw. “God, I loved your mother. But she was very, very sick. And even so, I wouldn’t have traded a single moment of the time I had with her. Not even when she was throwing up or when she cried herself to sleep. Love isn’t Hallmark movies, Melina. It’s Jeopardy! but with categories so narrow only two people in the whole world know the answers. Have you seen my reading glasses? and Do I have a tick on my back? and Will you be there for me when it’s time for me to go?” He shook his head, laughing ruefully. “Mind you, when people say this is what your mom would have wanted for me, I don’t believe a word of it. Your mother would have come at me with a hatchet at the thought of me with some other woman. But…I also think she’d forgive me.” A small smile ghosted over his face. “Because that’s what best friends do.

you have any clue what it’s like to be a woman?” “Is that a trick question?” “It’s being judged constantly. For your clothes. For your curves. It’s being told every time you turn on the TV that you have to be thinner or more beautiful. It means doing the same job as a man and getting paid less for it. It means if you age naturally you’re letting yourself go, and if you get work done, you’re trying too hard.” She drew in a shaky breath. “Being a woman means being told to speak up for yourself

Emilia wondered if the best revenge against those trying to erase you was, simply, existing.

It’s being judged constantly. For your clothes. For your curves. It’s being told every time you turn on the TV that you have to be thinner or more beautiful. It means doing the same job as a man and getting paid less for it. It means if you age naturally you’re letting yourself go, and if you get work done, you’re trying too hard.

The most extraordinary moment of any show was the hiccup of time between the last line and the applause. It took only a heartbeat for the audience to leave the world of the play to regain footing in this one—but, oh, those seconds were precious. It was the proof that they’d taken a journey; and that they’d come home changed.

In her life, when faced with yet more adversity, a woman straightened her shoulders and said, "All right, I'll take on another burden." Strength was endurance, not escape. It was looking at a piece of granite and noticing flecks of fool's gold.

Escape may not be possible in my lifetime. Mayhap I am like that bird, beating against the window for naught. But you—or your daughter, or your daughter’s daughter—may be the one to fly through the hole.

Do you think it’s worse to have decades to say goodbye to someone,” Melina asked, “or to not get the chance to say goodbye?

Facts, seen from different angles, could be dismissed as fictions, and vice versa. There was a reason you could not create history without writing the word story.

It means there is nothing either good or bad,” she said softly. “But thinking makes it so.

if you don’t like something, you might not realize it wasn’t meant for you to like.

Get out," Emilia growled, in a voice she had never heard come from her throat. "I am more than this. It does not matter what you see when you look at me, because you will never know me the way I know myself. And even if I am the only person in the world with that knowledge, it does not make it any less real.

Theoretically you know that loving someone means you'll lose them, or they'll lose you. But until it happens and you're the one left behind, you don't really get what that means.

The real thing that got me thinking were his female characters. Beatrice... Rosalind... Viola... Portia. They were feminists long before there was ever a woman's movement. But Shakespeare, in real life, had two daughters that he never educated. They didn't even know how to write their own names." Melina shook her head. "I just can't believe a man who created such iconic women in his plays wouldn't want his daughters to have the same rights.

A good leg will fall. A straight back will stoop. A black beard will turn white. A curled pate will grow bald." He held out a small triangle of fruit toward Emilia. "But a good heart, my dear... well, a good heart is the sun and the moon.

If I'm in the closet", he said, "I might as well do something there.