ring out, wild bells

“It is absurd to tell women to love themselves in a world that alienates them from their own flesh. No amount of one-quarter-moisturiser soap can wash away the knowledge of what your female body means to others: sex object, breeder, wank fodder, window dressing, on-set extra. The distress women feel when confronted with image after image of extreme thinness cannot simply be characterised as “I want to look like that so that men love me”. A woman might actually be thinking “women are supposed to look like that because men do not like us at all”. Or “I want to look like that so that my body will be less fleshy, less female and less real”. Women starve, binge and purge because they feel trapped in bodies that are not “theirs”. The trouble is, there’s never a female body that fits.”

“Loving life is easy when you are abroad. Where no one knows you and you hold your life in your hands all alone, you are more master of yourself than at any other time.”

“Second hand books are wild books, homeless books; they have come together in vast flocks of variegated feather, and have a charm which the domesticated volumes of the library lack.”