“Marjan. I have told him tales of good women and bad women, strong women and weak women, shy women and bold women, clever women and stupid women, honest women and women who betray. I'm hoping that, by living inside their skins while he hears their stories, he'll understand over time that women are not all this way or that way. I'm hoping he'll look at women as he does at men--that you must judge each of us on her own merits, and not condemn us or exalt us only because we belong to a particular sex.”
― Susan Fletcher, quote from Shadow Spinner
“There are some stories that you don't tell aloud, that you make up and tell silently to yourself.”
― Susan Fletcher, quote from Shadow Spinner
“If you let words go buzzing out of your mouth like bees, she always told me, they will come back and sting you.”
― Susan Fletcher, quote from Shadow Spinner
“My auntie Chava used to tell me to chew my words before letting them out. "Seven times, Majan," she would say. "Chew them seven times.”
― Susan Fletcher, quote from Shadow Spinner
“There are many different words inside a city. The world of the rich and the world of beggars. The world of men and the world behind the veil. The worlds of Muslims and of Christians and of Jews.
If you are a rich woman living inside a harem, the world of a poor Christian beggarman is as foreign as China or Abyssinia.
All the worlds touch at the bazaar. And the other place where they touch is in stories. Shahrazad crossed borders all the time, telling tales of country women and Bedouin sheikhs, of poor fishermen and scheming sultanas, of Jewish doctors and Christian brokers, of India and China and the lands of the jinn.
If we don’t share our stories—trading them across our borders as freely as spices and ebony and silk—we will all be strangers forever.”
― Susan Fletcher, quote from Shadow Spinner
“The Sultan tapped his tented fingers, staring into the distance. Suddenly, he lunged toward me, took hold of my wrist, and pulled me roughly down to sit on the cushion beside him. “This . . . mermaid,” he said through clenched teeth, leaning in so close to me that I could smell the mint on his breath. “The one who sang to the king at night.” His voice was fierce, but quiet. I couldn’t tell if anyone but me could hear. “How . . .” he began. “How did she think of the king . . . in her heart?”
I glanced quickly up at his face and saw there a look that took me by surprise. An oddly soft, vulnerable, hurting look. The look of a man who might cry out in his sleep at night, like a child. But then the stony mask slid back.
“Did she despise him,” the Sultan asked, “for making her sing for her life each night? Did she only pretend affection to save her own skin? Did she . . . loathe him for what he had done before, to his other wives? For his . . . sins?”
“No, my lord,” I said softly. “She loved him.”
“Do you swear it?” He gripped my wrist harder, until it hurt.
“Yes, my lord. She told me—” I stopped, corrected myself. “She told the mermaid with the broken fin. She said the king—the merman king, my lord—she said that he had a deep hurting inside him. She said that she wanted to soothe him. And when the mermaid with the broken fin . . . questioned how the queen could love him—because of the things you just said, my lord—the queen said, ‘I’m not ashamed of loving him. There’s nothing wrong with loving someone. It’s hating—that’s what’s wrong.”
― Susan Fletcher, quote from Shadow Spinner
Susan Fletcher
Born place: in Pasadena, The United States
Born date May 28, 1951
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“Can it be that what provides for us is the very thing that poisons us? Who hasn't considered this terrible possibility?”
― Richard Russo, quote from Bridge of Sighs
“We went to a Barnes and Noble, where I picked up an unauthorized
biography of M.C. Hammer, and not wanting to overload her on her first
book, I steered Dumb Dumb toward a Choose Your Own Adventure.”
― Chelsea Handler, quote from My Horizontal Life: A Collection of One-Night Stands
“Then it comes to me. It cannot be that this is the first time I realized this, but it is. We all have ugly parts. I think of the time in the cafeteria when Jasmine asked me what the girl in the picture was asking me. How do we live with all the suffering? We see our ugly parts, and then we are able to forgive, love kindness, walk humbly.”
― Francisco X. Stork, quote from Marcelo in the Real World
“Si pudiera descubrir porqué se encasillan, podría averiguar por qué yo no lo hago, por qué me he convertido en una chica invisible. El tipo de chica que tiene unos cuantos amigos y un montón de conocidos, pero no pertenece a nada en concreto. Supongo que ser invisible es mejor que fingir formar parte de algo; pero no te hace sentir menos solo.”
― Jackson Pearce, quote from As You Wish
“Now there was nothing but awful, terrible silence. Sight is a sense outside and apart from the body, an image on the surface of the eye. But sound enters the ears, the head, it lives inside. In sound's absence, silence echoes.”
― Margaret Weis, quote from Dragon Wing
Him
Ruin Box Set 1-3
This One is Mine
Succulent Wild Woman
Happily Ever After
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