She knows herself to be at the mercy of events, and she knows by now that events have no mercy. - Margaret Atwood

The tulips along the border are redder than ever, opening, no longer wine cups but chalices; thrusting themselves up, to what end? They are, after all, empty. When they are old they turn themselves inside out, explode slowly, the petals thrown like shards.

Women have curious ways of hurting someone else. They hurt themselves instead; or else they do it so the guy doesn't even know he's been hurt until much later. Then he finds out. Then his dick falls off.

They spent the first three years of school getting you to pretend stuff and then the rest of it marking you down if you did the same thing.