Quotes from Danielle Henderson

Grandma had been encouraging me to castrate men since I was old enough to know what dicks even were.

As bothered as I am by having to defend my decision, I'm more incensed that people think they have the right to ask.

As a woman who chooses to be childless, I generally have just one problem: other adults. Living in a culture where women are assumed to prioritize motherhood above all else and where a woman's personal choices are often considered matters of public discussion means everyone things they have the right to discuss my body and my choices, so anyone curious about my lack of spawn feels the right to march right on over and ask me about it.

Normally when I tell people I'm a gender studies major, they look at me like I'm studying Sanskrit or Latin. But now, NOW I had something to show my family, to possibly convince them that one day I would be employable. Look! People still like feminism! Or maybe they just really like Ryan Gosling's face. But they're getting that face with a dose of feminism! Like it or not.

When I was born and the nurse held me like a football, when I opened my creepy little eyes, the first person I saw was my grandmother. I opened my eyes and saw the love of my life.

The rush of adrenaline I used to get when someone told me I could stay up past my bedtime has since been replaced with the wave of euphoria I feel whenever I realize I can go to sleep before 9:00 p.m.

If you see a teenager in the wild, be gentle. Every single one, even the coolest among them, is navigating the world like a twitching sack of snakes stuck in the molting phase.

Children were not to be seen or heard and were definitely not to complain about any injuries sustained during the fifteen hours a day we were roaming the streets. The 1980s were a decade of neglect, and I haven't felt freedom or terror like it since.

My grandma was the scariest person I'd ever met, and I could not imagine any man having the ability to terrify me more than her.

Danielle Elizabeth Henderson! Get your ass over here!' she shouted. Grandma always used my full name when she was angry. None of the shoppers around her turned a head or lifted a finger to help; in the 1980s, department stores were full of people shouting the names of temporarily lost children, a cacophony of negligent parenting always ringing out like the last act of an opera.

There's no way to tell if Ryan Gosling is actually a feminist; feminism is a serious business, and something you have to come to on your own terms. He hasn't actually said anything in this book. But he is charming, talented, and intelligent; he has said some things in the media that can be construed as feminist. He loves his mom and takes ballet. He has nice things to say about the women he dates. It's not too far-fetched, right?

Every day, I try to be my own parent - the parent I never had.

I negotiate the terms of my life every day and work hard to maintain an emotional status quo that I had to create from scratch.

I don't resemble my mom at all. Mom made beauty seem like a magic trick I'd never learn. I think there was a part of me that was trying, in those moments, to know her deeply, deep enough so that I could one day bring to light any small part of me that was hers. —

I was surrounded by whiteness and hadn't yet learned that I was beautiful in a different way.

Grandma never understood fear, especially if it was someone else's.

If touching a spider kills you, well, I guess you were too delicate for this earth, and it was nice knowing you." My summers always started with a firm acknowledgment that I might die as a result of trying to enjoy them.

Like serial killers and three of the worst men I ever dated, I never really had a grasp on what I was supposed to feel sorry about. Week after week, I filled the confessional with lies. I yelled at my teacher. I stole my best friend's favorite toy. I kicked a dog. I punched my brother in the nuts.

It slowly dawned on me: if I could lie and be quickly forgiven, there was nothing to stop me from actually doing some of the stuff I was making up. Catholicism flipped a switch and turned me on to a life of crime.

At nineteen, she had decided that her life was her own, and she was going to use it to chase a man.

Thank you," I said to my lap, unable to stop the knee-jerk reaction to Mom's invective. She taught me this. How to be kind, passive. He used that kindness to hurt me, to shame me into silence.

A lot of people who had terrible childhoods have kids to prove that they can do a better job, or to fix some cosmic rift by being the parents they needed to their own children.

It was possible that I could stop assuming that no one could handle the whole mess of me and give them a chance to surprise me instead.

If anyone tries to grab you, you know what to do?" I rolled my eyes again. "Cut his dick off." "That's right," Grandma said. She pointed at me and tilted her head up to look me in the eye. "If anybody ever puts their hands on you, you cut their pecker right off.