He considers me also a little fragile because artistic. I need to be cared for, like a potted plant. - Margaret Atwood

You refuse to own yourself, you permit others to do it for you

There's the story, then there's the real story, then there's the story of how the story came to be told. Then there's what you leave out of the story. Which is part of the story too.

What fabrications they are, mothers. Scarecrows, wax dolls for us to stick pins into, crude diagrams. We deny them an existence of their own, we make them up to suit ourselves — our own hungers, our own wishes, our own deficiencies.