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Quote by Colette

“Rest assured that long patience and jealously concealed sorrows have shaped, refined, and hardened that woman who makes people exclaim: "She's made of steel!" She's simply "made of woman," and that's sufficient.”

Quote by Colette

Work

The Vagabond

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Colette

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“anyway, the whole world knows, european & non-european alike, the whole world knows that nobody loves the black woman like they love farrah fawcett-majors. the whole world dont turn out for a dead black woman like they did for marilyn monroe. (actually, the demise of josephine baker waz an international event, but she waz also a war hero)”

“There was Brunhilde, a star shining high above the hillside behind her, dark, rippling hair hanging below her waist, standing in full command, spear in hand. Constance could not help thinking the star so large and bright might have shone over Bethlehem. She was momentarily grateful for her veil, not only for the concealment of her identity but also of her amused response to the scene before her. She struggled to contain herself as her eyes moved to the second vignette: here was fair Juliet, standing beneath rather than on her balcony, garbed in simple lines, her head wreathed in flowers, a cross of stars high above her. Ah, those star-crossed lovers, thought Constance. Again, she was glad that she could hide her amusement. How clever these women, she thought. The third was Semiramis, a quarter moon low above the exotic turrets behind her crowned head, a long-handled fan in her hand, like the fan of a servant. How should Constance interpret this? At once she noticed the replication of the shape of Brunhilde’s spear, but it was enlarged. Semiramis, the queen who had served for her son yet had conquered her foes and enlarged her kingdom. And was this moon waxing or waning? Rising or setting? Or perhaps the enigma of a waxing moon rising. Ah, somehow that was comfort. Last, before a rising sun, framed by trees that reached out to touch one another, stood Pocahontas, her costume appearing authentic, a feather in her headdress, the emblematizing dawn of a new age, a new woman in a new world. May it be so, thought Constance.”

“All democratic experiments, all revolutions, all demands for equality have so far, in every instance, stopped short of sexual equality. Every society has in its prestige structures a series of subtle, interacting codes of dominance that always, everywhere, finally rank men higher than women.”

“[I]n most human societies, men tend to try, and usually succeed, to monopolize the most exciting, dramatic kinds of work—they'll set the fires that burn down the forest on which they plant their fields, for example, and, if they can, relegate to women the more monotonous and time-consuming tasks, such as weeding. One might say that men will always take for themselves the kind of jobs one can tell stories about afterward, and try to assign women the kind you tell stories during.”