La guía de la dama para las enaguas y la piratería

But if I cannot always believe in myself, I can believe in Johanna. And Sim. And Sybille Glass and Artemisa Gentileschi and Sophia Brahe and Marie Fouquet and Margaret Cavendish and every other woman who came before us. I have never doubted the women who came before me or whether they deserved a seat at the table.

Everyone has heard stories of women like us, and now we will make more of them

—Los he extrañado. A los dos.
—No sé lo diré a Monty

... Women don't have to be men's equals to be considered contenders; they have to be better... That's the lie of it all. You have to be better to prove yourseld worthy of being equal.

You're trying to play a game designated by men. You'll never win, because the deck is stacked and marked, and also you've been blindfolded and set on fire. You can work hard and believe in yourself and be the smartest person in the room and you'll still get beat by the boys who haven't two cents to rub together. So if you want to win the game, you have to cheat.
You operate outside the walls they've built to fence you in. You rob them in the dark, while they're drunk on spirits you offered them. Poison their waters and drink only wine.

A wildflower. The kind that are strong enough to stand against wind, rare and difficult to find and impossible to forget. Something men walk continents for a glimpse of. But you're right - whatever I am, there would likely be spines. Or thorns. They keep people away.

Softness can be an armor, even if it isn't my armor.

I want to tell her I've spent my whole life learning to be my own everything because... I have spent so long building up my fortress and learning to tend it alone, because if I didn't feel I needed anyone, then I wouldn't miss them if they weren't there. I couldn't be neglected if I was everything to myself. But now, those fortifications suddenly feel like prison walls, high and barbed and impossible to cross.

Your beauty is not a tax you are required to pay to take up space in the world

How is it, I wonder, that the brain and the heart can be so at odds and yet have such a profound effect upon the functions of the other?