“That was part of being a girl--you were resigned to whatever feedback you'd get. If you got mad, you were crazy, and if you didn't react, you were a bitch. The only thing you could do was smile from the corner they'd backed you into. Implicate yourself in the joke even if the joke was always on you.”— Emma Cline, amazon.comTagged: Girls, Growing Up, Womanhood, strength, feminism
“I waited to be told what was good about me. [...] All that time I had spent readying myself, the articles that taught me life was really just a waiting room until someone noticed you- the boys had spent that time becoming themselves.”— Emma Cline, amazon.comTagged: Girls, Growing Up, Womanhood, strength, feminism
“Marion smiled at him with an intensity that made her look almost cruel. I tried to smile that same way.”— Emma Cline, theparisreview.orgTagged: Womanhood, sexual attraction, Lust, Love, Relationships
“Poor Sasha. Poor girls. The world fattens them on the promise of love. How badly they need it, and how little most of them will ever get. The treacled pop songs, the dresses described in the catalogs with words like 'sunset' and 'Paris.' Then the dreams are taken away with such violent force; the ha…”— Emma Cline, amazon.comTagged: Girls, Growing Up, Womanhood, strength, feminism
“Adults always teased me about having boyfriends, but there was an age where it was no longer a joke, the idea that boys might actually want you.”— Emma Cline, amazon.comTagged: Girls, Growing Up, Womanhood, strength, feminism
“So much of desire, at that age, was a willful act. Trying so hard to slur the rough, disappointing edges of boys into the shape of someone we could love.”— Emma Cline, amazon.comTagged: Girls, Growing Up, Womanhood, strength, feminism
“I knew just being a girl in the world handicapped your ability to believe yourself. Feelings seemed completely unreliable, like faulty gibberish scraped from a Ouija board.”— Emma Cline, amazon.comTagged: Girls, Growing Up, Womanhood, strength, feminism
“We licked batteries to feel a metallic jolt on the tongue, rumored to be one-eighteenth of an orgasm.”— Emma Cline, amazon.comTagged: Girls, Growing Up, Womanhood, strength, feminism
“I dressed to provoke love, tugging my neckline lower, settling a wistful stare on my face whenever I went out in public that implied many deep and promising thoughts, should anybody happen to glance over.”— Emma Cline, amazon.comTagged: Girls, Growing Up, Womanhood, strength, feminism
“The hatred that vibrated beneath the surface of my girl's face-- I think Suzanne recognized it. Of course my hand would anticipate the weight of a knife. The particular give of a human body. There was so much to destroy.”— Emma Cline, amazon.comTagged: Girls, Growing Up, Womanhood, strength, feminism
“the gaudy, prickling tease that was almost the same thing as beauty.”— Emma Cline, amazon.comTagged: Girls, Growing Up, Womanhood, strength, feminism
“These long-haired girls seemed to glide above all that was happening around them, tragic and separate. Like royalty in exile.”— Emma Cline, amazon.comTagged: Girls, Growing Up, Womanhood, strength, feminism
“I looked up because of the laughter, and kept looking because of the girls. I noticed their hair first, long and uncombed. Then their jewelry catching the sun.”— Emma Cline, amazon.comTagged: Girls, Growing Up, Womanhood, strength, feminism
“The intensity of his attention seemed exposing, and I laughed a little. I was just starting to learn how to be looked at. I took a deep drink. The glass was full of vodka, cloudy with the barest slip of orange juice.”— Emma Cline, amazon.comTagged: Girls, Growing Up, Womanhood, strength, feminism
“There would be no heroics, I understood. Just the dull terror, the physical pain that would have to be suffered through”— Emma Cline, amazon.comTagged: Girls, Growing Up, Womanhood, strength, feminism
“That day, when Jack watched Marion in the barn as he rolled a cigarette for her, I felt a flint of heat in my insides. When he glanced at me, I turned and hunched my shoulders, trying to relieve the strain of my breasts against the borrowed fabric. I never went out in that swimsuit again.”— Emma Cline, theparisreview.orgTagged: Womanhood, sexual attraction, Lust, Love, Relationships
“We were jealous, imagining a boyfriend who wanted you so bad he broke the law. We were drifting through whole weeks, making bonfires at night, eating twenty popsicles in a row and burying the flimsy plastic wrappers all over the yard.”— Emma Cline, theparisreview.orgTagged: Womanhood, sexual attraction, Lust, Love, Relationships
“Getting people to look at you, I understood, was a way of getting things to happen.”— Emma Cline, theparisreview.orgTagged: Life, Womanhood, feminism, coming of age
“I squeezed lemon juice on my hair until it was crisp and sticky, and then I sat in the sun, hoping my hair would lighten to her shade of pale. I studied her face for signs of my own, noting her polyester miniskirts, the slim legs in tall boots.”— Emma Cline, theparisreview.orgTagged: Life, Womanhood, feminism, coming of age
“I see it now, sometimes in my own face, but also in the faces of younger girls on the subway, their pinkies linked, their eyes darting and wounded. See me, they say.”— Emma Cline, theparisreview.orgTagged: Life, Womanhood, feminism, coming of age