When you lose your parents as a child, you are indoctrinated into a club, you re taken into life's severest confidence. You are undeceived.

Boys will be boys, that's what everyone always says. But no one ever mentions how girls have to be something other than themselves altogether.

Optimism is when you're not sure where life is going to take you, so naturally you anticipate the best possible outcome

It was frankly sort of confusing, the way everyone stared at our bodies exactly as they tried to erase the ideas of our bodies from our minds. We were supposed to get over ourselves but no one was supposed to get over us. The female body was our worst handicap and our best advantage - the surest means to success, the surest course to failure.

Mine is not a smiling face. Strangers on the street always say, Smile! But my muscles do not naturally go there.