A Quote by Zadie Smith

It was in the air, or so it seemed to Kiki, this hatred of women and their bodies- it seeped in with every draught in the house; people brought it home on their shoes, they breathed it in off their newspapers. There was no way to control it.
For men to focus on controlling women's reproduction to solve a society's problems seems nothing short of mad or, at best, superstitious. But men's superstition or insanity has real and dire consequences for the women who are its object. And states, too, home in on women's bodies, perhaps to create the illusion that men are in control of uncontrollable forces. Indeed, almost all governments try to control women's bodies and regulate their appearance in some way.
In the early years after the Communist Revolution, politics and revolutionary fervor infused every aspect of daily life, and the very air one breathed seemed filled with propaganda for Communist ideals.
Why extremists always focus on women remains a mystery to me. But they all seem to. It doesn’t matter what country they’re in or what religion they claim. They all want to control women. They want to control how we dress. They want to control how we act. They even want to control the decisions we make about our own health and our own bodies. Yes, it is hard to believe but even here at home we have to stand up for women’s rights and we have to reject efforts to marginalize any one of us, because America has to set an example for the entire world.
This is going to sound crazy, but the first thing I do when I get home is take off all my clothes - at home, just around the house. I take everything off. I can't stand clothes! I take everything off - my shoes, my socks, my watch, shirt, everything. I am completely naked.
It should be self-evident that women have the right to make decisions about their own bodies. Yet throughout history, those in power - usually men - have tried to control women's bodies.
He breathed out the bitter air that makes women doubt everything, and I breathed it in, as I had always done. I expelled my dust, the powder of everything I had destroyed with doubt, and he pulled it into his lungs.
When we were growing up we only got two pairs of shoes every year. With me, I was lucky because I got three pairs of shoes, the third were basketball shoes: Black Air Force Ones, White Air Force Ones, and boots for the winter.
I feel truth, beauty, love, grief, anger, intimacy & alive in my body... Women in the global south live in their bodies much more than we in the global north. Not as distracted by patriarchy's controlling images - They know power is in their bodies. I am deeply grateful for the women who showed me the way home.
The air seemed poisoned with fear and hatred. People eyed on another suspiciously, and the streets smelled of a silence that knotted your stomach.
The air is like a draught of wine. The undertaker cleans his sign, The Hull express goes off the line, When it's raspberry time in Runcorn.
I do not believe that we have a right to tell other people, women, that they can't control their bodies.
I saw some women had written that the cloning of Dolly was wonderful since it showed that women could have children without men. They didn?t even understand that this was the ultimate ownership of women?of embryos, of eggs, of bodies?by a few men with capital and control techniques, that it wasn?t freedom from men but total control by men.
There is something about poverty that smells like death. Dead dreams dropping off the heart like leaves in a dry season and rotting around the feet; impulses smothered too long in the fetid air of underground caves. The soul lives in sickly air. People can be slaveships in shoes.
For small erections may be finished by their first architects; grand ones, true ones, ever leave the copestone to posterity. God keep me from ever completing anything. This whole book is but a draught—nay, but the draught of a draught. Oh, Time, Strength, Cash, and Patience!
Not every man has shoes, so reduce the number of shoes at your home till every man has at least one!
One drop of hatred left in the cup of joy turns the most blissful draught into poison.
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