Lisa Taddeo

“Often, the type of waiting women do is to make sure other women approve, so that they may also approve of themselves.”

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“We pretend to want things we don’t want so nobody can see us not getting what we need.”

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“Like many girls her age, Maggie is laid out before the world, unafraid, unpopulated. Men come to insert themselves, they turn a girl into a city. When they leave, their residue remains, the discoloration on the wood where the sun came through every day for many days, until one day it didn’t.“

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“But you can’t say these things. Because Hoy and everybody else lives in denial. They won’t be honest even in their own brains let alone in a courtroom where everything you say can be used against you. There is no humanity in humans. You palm your arm to smooth down the shivering hairs. They are picking up on a breeze of self-hatred.”

- Excerpts from Lisa Taddeo’s Three Women