Girlhood – Quotes

How rarely boyhood loves

How rarely boyhood loves to paint in glowing tints his future bright, a picture where no line is faint–whose very clouds are touch’d with light. And girlhood hails a world unknown and reads it in her own glad dreams, as lilies see themselves alone reflected in their azure streams. But rosy clouds that morning brings, … Read more

She knew herself, how

She knew herself, how she had slowly, over years, become a cat, a wolf, a snake, anything but a girl. How she had wrung out her girlhood like death. Catherynne M. Valente

The girl of the

The girl of the period sets up to be natural, and is only rude; mistakes insolence for innocence; says everything that comes first to her lips, and thinks she is gay when she is only giddy. Benjamin Disraeli

Part of the racialized

Part of the racialized sexism wants everyone to think that a 15-year old Mexican is not a girl, she’s a woman. We know she’s a girl. We can never emphasize this enough, because this is the fate of colored girls globally right now: the denial of their girlhood, the denial of their childhood, and the … Read more

To all the world

To all the world he was the man of violence, half animal and half demon; but to her he always remained the little wilful boy of her own girlhood, the child who had clung to her hand. Evil indeed is the man who has not one woman to mourn him. Arthur Conan Doyle

Evil indeed is the

Evil indeed is the man who has not one woman to mourn him. Arthur Conan Doyle

Girlhood … is the

Girlhood … is the intellectual phase of a woman’s life, that time when, unencumbered by societal expectations or hormonal rages, one may pursue any curiosity from the mysteries of the yo-yo to the meaning of infinity. These two particular pursuits were where I left off in the fifth grade when I discovered a hair growing … Read more

Lizzie Harris’s Stop Wanting

Lizzie Harris’s Stop Wanting is an unflinching book about a girlhood filled with violence, doubt, vulnerability, and loss. These gorgeously crafted and hauntingly memorable poems are a bleak place full of life, prayer, and the kind of answers only poems like these can provide. Rachel Zucker

One must always regret

One must always regret that law of growth which renders necessary that kittens should spoil into demure cats, and bright, joyous school-girls develop into the spiritless, crystallized beings denominated young ladies.
Abba Louisa Goold Woolson