By Any Other Name

“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.”

StrengthAdversityBurdenEndurance

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“Your son, Hamnet," she said, swallowing. "Does the loss... does it ever abate?" He stilled. She wondered how long it had been since someone spoke that name out loud to him. "It changes," he said carefully. "At times it stops pulling, like a stitch. But then I will be doing something, perhaps crossing a field where I once tossed him onto my shoulder, and I will find myself on my knees sobbing." Shakespeare cleared his throat. "They call it a loss, but that's misconstrued, is it not? They remain with us.”

LoveDeathParentLossHealingHeartbreakChild

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“He had often been put into a time-out to "think about what he said," but when he did, he never wanted to revise his original words. Eventually her learned to guess what people wanted to hear and what they didn't . To him, it had always felt like lying. Wasn't an omission just as bad as an untruth?”

HonestyLieOmissionRevise

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“If they're going to call you a bitch no matter what, you might as well earn the title.”

WomenPowerFeminismBitchy

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“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.”

WomenPowerfulFeministWriteShakespeareIconic

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“He had paid for her body, but he'd valued her mind. More important, he's made her value it, when it would have been so much easier otherwise believe that she was worth only the pleasure her flesh could bring a man. He was not a father figure and not a lover but something in between. And he had been kind.”

LoveLossKindnessValueWorth

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“Can one still see it?" Emilia asked eagerly. "Not anymore, mistress. But it can still be felt. You see, all the scholars and scientists believed until then that the harmony of the world was ensured by the stars, which were fixed and ageless. But my star, my supernova? It proved otherwise. It meant that the Heavens can shift and alter. And if that is true... then the world itself can change.”

WorldStarsChangeHeavensShift And Alter

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“You are good," Bufort said, "but you could be great. It's not enough to manipulate your audience's feelings. You must make them believe that there's a reason you are the one telling this story. 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.”

FeelingsPainStorytellingAuthorWriter

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“She would die here, either drowning in the storm or bleeding until her breath stopped. Her body would be wrapped in a canvas and tossed overboard, among the mermaids and sea dragons. Finally, she would no longer be anyone's problem to solve.”

ProblemPainDeathDragonsEndingMermaids

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“She wasn't an angel, and she wasn't an apparition. She was a wraith, and every chamber of her heart was haunted.”

DreamTruthPainAngelWraith

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“If the greatest playwright of all time was a hoax, wouldn't that have been exposed in the last, oh, four hundred years?" Darnell asked. "I think a hoax can look like history," Melina replied, "if you mistake mythology for truth.”

TruthHistoryMythology

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“There is a difference, Emilia, between being kept - like me - and being owned - like a wife. The difference is freedom. I do what I want and I go where I want, as long as I make myself available otherwise.”

FreedomWifeKeptCourtesanOwned

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“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.”

KnowledgePowerImportanceWorth

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“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.”

LoveDeathLossLeft Behind

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“It was only a half-truth. This was not happiness she felt. But emotions did have a way of spilling out when they could not be contained in your heart. You could love someone even when you were apart. You could grieve before you lost him.”

LoveHeartHappinessGriefEmotion

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“You could not have put it more bluntly that the real writer isn't in this picture but rather is found in the text," Emilia said, impressed. Jonson smirked. "Yes, well, you're a playwright. You know that sometimes the audience is clay-brained.”

HumorAudienceWritersImplicationsIdiots

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“They've convinced you that your life is so small, you shouldn't even hope for better.”

LifeHopeWorthlessMore Than This

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“They are all but stomachs, and we are all but food; They eat us hungerly, and when they are full They belch us. “And then they blame us for their indigestion.” —Emilia, #Othello #onmen”

ShakespeareOthelloEmilia Bassano

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“Jasper often felt like he had been dropped into a life-size board game without anyone giving him a set of rules. If he knew what was expected, he could memorize it and act accordingly. Otherwise, he invariably made a misstep.”

ExpectationsRulesNeurodivergentMisstep

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“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.”

HeartAgeTimeSun And Moon

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“Indeed, a woman is more likely to see the disparity between what one hopes for and what one can achieve.”

DreamsRealismHopesDisparityPracticality

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“For so long he had loomed large as Melina's nemesis. She had grown him to monstrous proportions, and he'd taken up an outsize amount of her emotional and intellectual energy, seeding so much doubt that it crowded out space for anything else.”

MindDarknessDoubtMonsterLoomingNemesis

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“Love is a god," Emilia said. "Marriage is but words.”

LoveMarriageHonestyPracticality

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