When Women Were Dragons

“But to be fair, she continued, I never said that numbers were magic. I said that your mother was magic. A sorceress, specially, but let’s just say magic, it’s easier. But here’s the thing, Alex, my love, this isn’t new information, and your mother isn’t alone. All women are magic. Literally all of us. It’s in our nature. It’s best you learn that now.”

InspirationWomenMagicFeminism

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“The doors to ivory towers don’t open automatically to the daughters of poor farmers.”

WomenFantasyCollegeDaughters

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“I didn't call my father. Instead I thought about my aunt. I hadn't thought about her for a long time. But I imagined Marla bursting into the room, restarting my mother the way she used to restart old cars. I imagined my aunt punching the doctors who failed us. I imagined my aunt flying into the side of the building and bursting in through the window in a spangle of broken glass, her eyes flashing like rubies, her dragonish scales a brilliant contrast to the thin hospital light, her muscles rippling across her flexible frame. An astonishment of light and heat and violent intellect.”

DeathGriefAuntMothers And DaughtersSpoilers

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“But," she praised. Her lips shook. She put her hand on my cheek. "What if you told the story wrong? What if it was staying a girl that made that sister die of sorrow? Maybe if the dragoned sister stayed, then she would have died, too. Maybe they would both die of sorrow.”

Grief

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“But," she paused. Her lips shook. She put her hand on my cheek. "What if you told the story wrong? What if it was staying a girl that made that sister die of sorrow? Maybe if the dragoned sister stayed, then she would have died, too. Maybe they would both die of sorrow.”

Grief

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“What is grief, but love that's lost its object?”

LoveLossGrief

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“How can I ever know what my mother meant? Even now, after all these years, she is a memory of a memory of a memory. Her own kind of unsolvable, inscrutable knot.”

MemoryMothers

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“It requires an incredible amount of humility to be willing to be wrong nearly all the time. But we have to be willing to be wrong, and proven wrong, in order to increase knowledge overall.”

Humility

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“You have brought me here, gentlemen, in hopes of conquest--in an attempt to rein in this feminine largeness, to shrink it down and force it to acquiesce to your paternal control, to allow our culture to forget that any of this dragon business ever happened. This, my friends, is an impossibility.”

Feminism

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“Instead, they drew dragons. Big dragons, tiny dragons. Dragons destroying skyscrapers and dragons swimming with whales and dragons dancing on the head of a pin and dragons skidding down one arm of the Milky Way. Dragons in school desks. Dragons in cars. Dragons doing dishes. Dragons downing missiles. Dragons laying waste to armies or governments or home economics classrooms. There were no words. No explanations. No statements of intent. Just dragons.”

FantasyFeminismAlternative History

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“I have stored these memories the way any child stores memory--a haphazard collection of sharp, bright objects socked away on the darkest shelves in the dustiest corners of our mental filing systems. They stay there, those memories, rattling in the dark. Scratching at the walls. Disrupting our careful ordering of what we think is true. And injuring us when we forget how dangerous they are, and we grasp too hard.”

ChildhoodMemoryTrauama

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“The memory of her vanishing felt both unpleasant to encounter and dangerous to hold, but I had no place to put it, no ordered shelf in my mind where it belonged. It remained unmentionable and therefore unclassifiable, which meant I had to carry it, every day, no matter how much it hurt.”

ChildhoodMemoryTrauma

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