“My love language is saying no and having them listen to me.”

Healing can look a lot like violence.

Can we just pretend we are wanted?

It is terrifying to wonder whether that person you love is a walking red flag or a white flag of surrender dipped in your own blood.

I am tired of only being loved in theory.

Her body is a undiscovered country and she is afraid that someone will colonize it and expect her to thank them for the wreckage.

You are something I am trying to love; Not something I am trying to survive.

When will I realize the absence of hate is not love?

I tell the boy in my class that no means no and he laughs in my face – says no means change my mind.

Loving you and leaving you taste the same in the mouth?

Women like me bleed on command.

This body belongs to all those who live in it.

The only difference between a mother and her daughter is how long they’ve lived with the trauma.

I never wanted to be so alone that all I have is you.

Did our fathers create silence or is it that what makes them our fathers?

Do girls really mature faster than boys or are you looking for a way to sexualize young girls without feeling guilty about it?

I know I’m difficult to love but I’m going to need you to love me anyway.

No fear or shame in the dignity of your experience, language, and knowledge.

Bad language is a stage all children go through, and it dies with time when they learn they’re not attracting attention with it.

No; I did not hate him. The word is too weak. There is no word in the language strong enough to describe my feelings. I can say only that I knew the gnawing of a desire for vengeance on him that was a pain in itself and that exceeded all the bounds of language.

The word is too weak. There is no word in the language strong enough to describe my feelings.

An alcoholic father, poverty, my own juvenile diabetes, the limited English my parents spoke – although my mother has become completely bilingual since. All these things intrude on what most people think of as happiness.

Boy, those French: they have a different word for everything!

There is only one caste the caste of humanity. There is only one religion the religion of love. There is only one language the language of the heart.

He said that if culture is a house, then language was the key to the front door; to all the rooms inside. Without it, he said, you ended up wayward, without a proper home or a legitimate identity.