Quotes from Tamara Faith Berger

I think that it's a space that there are a lot of projections onto—the soon-to-be sexualized and already-sexualized young woman. There are so many outside perceptions grafted onto her, that she feels all at once completely blank and completely full. I noticed that a lot in your book, as well, this repetition of a shallowness. But there is also depth in the constant repetition of this shallowness.

Masochism seemed to make sense to me in terms of the struggle for self-consciousness of the slave in the struggle unto death. 'I feel like sex, I mean, giving myself, helps me. Giving my whole self to someone until I forget who I am helps me deal with my problems.

My mother kept calling me out of myself. She wanted to show me a picture, the first picture from the slave-ship exhibition. 'This is unbelievable,' she said. 'Myra, you have to see this, this is unbelievable.' I cringed at how fast she was talking. Why unbelievable? This all actually happened! Why is this all so hard to believe?

I'd be more open than a book too. My spine would crack, I'd fall out in halves.

And then women will fuck men instead of men fucking them. And then this place can be burned to the ground.

At the beach, college girls lay in groups on the sand around buckets of drinks, their bums curved up like fruits. Mine didn't do that.

But maybe when you never say a thing, your thoughts spread like mould.

I was thinking: Girls get scared way too often. Girls get stupidly scared. I was not scared. Telling myself not to be scared kind of worked.

According to Hegel, the slave fully acknowledges the self-consciousness of the master and she dissolves herself or upholds herself as their relationship dictates and evolves to the struggle unto death. Although this struggle is a failure, according to Hegel, if someone actually dies.

All men think that a woman walking alone at night is a whore.