Every Exquisite Thing

I was so perfect before the world told me otherwise

It was the great paradox of my existence – I wanted to be loved, but I also wanted to be left alone. A dichotomy I could never quite reconcile.

Girls don’t want beauty. Girls want power and sometimes beauty is the closest substitute

We were bright and young and brilliant, alive with glittering promise, and yet we went to such extreme lengths to keep ourselves small. No matter the cost.

For the girls who were born hungry.

If there are 3 wolves inside of us, all of mine are encyclopaedias

Forgive the stack of books. They are in all seriousness my best friends.

Girls don’t want beauty. Girls want power. And sometimes beauty is the closest substitute.

I was so perfect before the world told me otherwise.

So maybe it’s not that you want beauty, it’s that you want identity.

I think I was just born hungry.

They had all explored the idea that the thing we truly wanted wasn’t actually beauty. It was whatever we believed beauty could buy us. Sex. Identity. Power. Love.

It was late September, and the heat of the summer had faded to an orange ember. The wych elms clustered in the quad had been kissed yellow at the tips, and the air was tinged with woodsmoke and clove.

I loathed her for how easily she honed in on my deepest insecurities.

The thing we truly wanted wasn’t actually beauty. It was whatever we believed beauty could buy us. Sex. Identity. Power. Love.

Big joy and small joy are the same, right? [...] Something so ordinary can be something so beautiful, if you look at it the right way.

It is neither normal nor natural to be so aware of our every unfortunate angle, our every perceived flaw.

Everyone wants to feel like someone and beauty is a shortcut to that

My own company was the only company I could honestly say I enjoyed. It was the great paradox of my existence.

Girls don't want beauty. Girls want power. And sometimes beauty is the closest substitute.

It’s like I told Orlagh – I don’t know who I am without my looks.’ ‘So maybe it’s not that you want beauty,’ Catalina said thoughtfully. ‘It’s that you want identity. Everyone wants to feel like someone, and beauty is a short cut to that.

Forgive the stack of books. They are, in all seriousness, my best friends.

If you must insist upon shrinking yourself, how do you propose to command a stage? If you cannot hone and sharpen your thoughts, how will you ever master Shakespeare? If you know not who you are, how can you truly embody another character?

What young woman doesn’t want to feel like they actually have control over something?

Some might find it rude, the way she was only ever half listening to you, the way her mind wandered mid-coversation as though she was chasing orcs that very second

By tying our worth to our beauty and our beauty to our youth, they ensure even the most powerful women will one day lose that status

Play the part. Pretend to be your mother. Nobody knows the real you.

Wasn’t that what everyone wanted, at the heart of themselves? To be adored?

You deserve to be loved.