I miss you, Eleanor. I want to be with you all the time. You’re the smartest girl I’ve ever met, and the funniest, and everything you do surprises me. And I wish I could say that those are the reasons I like you, because that would make me sound like a really evolved human being …‘But I think it’s got as much to do with your hair being red and your hands being soft … and the fact that you smell like homemade birthday cake

Being a female in music industry, it's hard. There are so many double standards for things. I read this one thing and it was like, "It seems like she can't figure out if she wants to be sexy bad girl or cutesy good girl." Yeah, because everyone's either one thing or the other. You're either Homecoming Queen Skipper or Delinquent Cop-Out Barbie. And you can't be anything in between the two. That's not how human beings are.

Spaceman 3 was one of my favorite bands growing up, and Jason Spaceman is someone I got along well with. I always felt his music was like narcotic gospel - there's something very moody and ethereal about it. Sun City Girls is the same, but different. To me, they're like the premier American avant music act. They're like the Marx brothers of music. I don't mean they're funny like that, but they turn everything on its head.

That adolescent me, the girl who was, as I remember her, insecure, unsure, dreaming, yearning, longing, that girl who was hard on herself, who was cowardly and brave, who was confused and determined-that girl who was me-still exists. I call on her when I write. I am the me of today-the person who has become a woman, a mother, a writer. Yet I am the me of all those other days as well. I believe in the reality of that past.

For most women being other-directed, focused on how other people feel and nurturing them, was (and can still be) a quality that girls were (are) heavily pressured to become. The unselfish or Self-less woman was (is) seen as ideal. The realization and articulation that the cultural ideal of the perfect woman was someone who had no sense of Self and was a key part of the angry energy that drove Feminism to its swift success.

A girl is like a young tree, she said. You must stand tall and listen to your mother standing next to you. That is the only way to grow strong and straight. But if you bend to listen to other people, you will grow crooked and weak. You will fall to the ground with the first strong wind. And then you will be like a weed, growing wild in any direction, running along the ground until someone pulls you out and throws you away.

We should be telling girls what they already know but rarely see affirmed: that the lives they lead inside their own self-contained bodies; the skills they attain through their own concentration and rigor, and the unique phase in their lives during which they may explore boys and eroticism at their own pace - these are magical. And they constitute the entrance point to a life cycle of a sexuality that should be held sacred.

Desire animates the world. It is present in the baby crying for milk, the girl struggling to solve a math problem, the woman running to meet her lover and later deciding to have children, and the old woman, hunched over her walker, moving down the hall of the nursing home at a glacial pace to pick up her mail. Banish desire from the world, and you get a world of frozen beings who have no reason to live and no reason to die.

The first time I saw you, when you stepped into that Skiz ring against Kaede, I thought you were the most beautiful girl I'd ever seen. I could've watched you forever. The first time I kiss you..." That memory overpowers me now, taking me by surprise. I remember every last detail of it, almost enough to push away the lingering images of the Elector pulling June to him. "Well, that might as well have been my first kiss ever.

with a country of rare picturesqueness for a background, a people of rare beauty for actors, everybody more or less permeated with the artistic instinct and everybody more or less writing poetry - California has a pageant for breakfast, a fiesta for luncheon and a carnival for dinner. They are always electing queens. In fact any girl in California who hasn't been a queen of something before she's twenty-one is a poor prune.

The thing about singing is that if you're having fun while doing it then people will have fun watching you do it. Like in karaoke if you're like "I don't think I can do it" and then you sing a song and you look terrified people will say, "Poor guy or poor girl, get offstage. You're killing us." But if you get onstage and you don't sing that well but you give it your all, people will be like, "Yeah, I'll chug beer to this!".

There once was a girl who found herself dead. She peered over the ledge of heaven and saw that back on earth her sister missed her too much, was way too sad, so she crossed some paths that would not have crossed, took some moments in her hand shook them up and spilled them like dice over the living world. It worked. The boy with the guitar collided with her sister. "There you go, Len," she whispered. "The rest is up to you.

It’s my own fault, really. For believing in fairy tales. Not that I ever mistook them for actual historical fact, or anything. But I did grow up believing that for every girl, there’s a prince out there somewhere. All she has to do is find him. Then it’s on with the happily ever after. So you can only imagine what happened when I found out. That my prince really IS one. A prince. No, I really mean it. He’s an actual PRINCE.

There is no man more pusillanimous than I when I am planning a campaign. I purposely exaggerate all the dangers and all the calamities that the circumstances make possible. I am in a thoroughly painful state of agitation. This does not keep me from looking quite serene in front of my entourage; I am like an unmarried girl laboring with child. Once I have made up my mind, everything is forgotten except what leads to success.

With Pussy Riot - this was a prank! It was a brilliant, artistically gifted prank. But they didn't expect to go to prison! They were college girls who became political prisoners for two years. That makes them very similar to the people who were "just going to a protest one day" and got arrested. They had no idea they were risking the rest of their lives. Because you're never the same after you've spent two years in a gulag.

La Zona is such a closed area, a dangerous, outlaw area. My time in the Zona was a time outside of society, almost out of the real world. And the girls there had such a sense of irony and sarcasm. They were also really interested in my film. They'd be like, "Thank God we live in Mexico, because our kind of prostitution has a heart. We wouldn't want to sit behind a glass cage or be sold by our own mothers. We have free will."

In 1971, Bossier City, Louisiana, there was a teenage girl who was pregnant with her second child. She was a high school dropout and a single mom, but somehow she managed to make a better life for herself and her children. She encouraged her kids to be creative, to work hard and to do something special. That girl is my mother and she's here tonight. And I just want to say, I love you, Mom. Thank you for teaching me to dream.

I don't think that all girls seek the influence of older men, but I think girls whose fathers are absent or recessed from their lives often do. And honestly, when I was growing up, fathers were generally pretty absent from their children's lives. We didn't see a lot of them. That may be something that has genuinely changed for the better in our culture: men are more present for their children now that more women are working.

I was sleeping in the woods one night after a gig we'd played somewhere, when I saw this girl appear before me. That girl was Emily. (on how he wrote "See Emily Play") "Chapter 24"-that was from the "I Ching", there was someone around who was very into that, most of the words came straight off that. "Lucifer Sam" was another one-it didn't mean much to me at the time, but then three or four months later it came to mean a lot.

It's useful to know how much society's holding you back. My mother would talk about how she was told by the head of her art school that she was the best painter, but that she wouldn't get the biggest prize because she would waste her talent by having children. I think we have to get honest with girls about how they can expect the world to block them, and we have to prepare girls, and ourselves, to break through those blocks.

'Princess' is a good word, as is 'girlish', 'pixie-like' and all these other things. I personally find it a bit boring, it's all been done before. The amount of times you read reviews of bands and it's an all-girl four-piece, and they talk about what the women are wearing... you'll never read a review that's like: "Male singer Thom Yorke, who was dressed in a white t-shirt and jeans..." You would never read that about a man.

Parents and leaders should give early help to the blase girl who is often overpainted and underdressed. She is the picture of an unhappy girl whose physical adornments, to her thinking, don't invite adequate attention. Heaven help the girl who gets the kind of attention she is seeking by being overpainted and underdressed! She will rue the day, of course, when she gets the kind of attention her flagrant invitation is giving.

The Jawbreaker writer-director Darren Stein was a huge fan of Carrie and Halloween. He was like a kid. He was 26, so he was such a fan. He wanted William Katt and I, from Carrie, to be in the movie as the parents. We had a little bit more that ended up on the cutting-room floor, but that was kind of fun. Everybody that worked on that movie was really cool, including the girls, especially the new girl, the blonde, Judy Greer.

Alan Ladd was a marvelous person in his simplicity. In so many ways we were kindred spirits. We both were professionally conceived through Hollywood's search for box office and the types to insure the box office. And we were both little people. Alan wasn't as short as most people believe. It was true that in certain films Alan would climb a small platform or the girl worked in a slit trench. We had no such problems together.

Look at your [English] ladies of quality are they not forever parting with their husbands - forfeiting their reputations - and is their life aught but dissipation? In common genteel life, indeed, you may now and then meet with very fine girls - who have politeness, sense and conversation - but these are few - and then look at your trademen's daughters - what are they? poor creatures indeed! all pertness, imitation and folly.

I suppose as long as novels last, and authors aim at interesting their public, there must always be in the story a virtuous and gallant hero; a wicked monster, his opposite; and a pretty girl, who finds a champion. Bravery and virtue conquer beauty; and vice, after seeming to triumph through a certain number of pages, is sure to be discomfited in the last volume, when justice overtakes him, and honest folks come by their own.

When I was creative director [at Estée Lauder], I was always being asked about my beauty must-haves. From there I had this fun idea to create a line of what was in my makeup bag. But I also love accessories, and people associate me with home, family, and beauty. As a girl, my favorite toy was my dollhouse; if I could still play with it now, I would! I used to love a well-arranged room: the furniture, the fabric, the lighting.

See," he began, leaning back into the booth, "I was at this car dealership today, and I saw this girl. It was an across-a-crowded-room kind of thing. A real moment, you know?" I rolled my eyes. Chloe said, "And this would be Remy?" "Right. Remy," he said, repeating my name with a smile. Then, as if we were happy honeymooners recounting our story for strangers he added, "Do you want to tell the next part?" "No," I said flatly.

I am now convinced that I have never been much in love; for had I really experienced that pure and elevating passion, I should at present detest his very name, and wish him all manner of evil. But my feelings are not only cordial towards him; they are even impartial towards her. I cannot find out that I hate her at all, or that I am in the least unwilling to think her a very good sort of girl. There can be no love in all this.

Chyerti—that’s us, demons and devils, small and big—are compulsive. We obsess. It’s our nature. We turn on a track, around and around; we march in step; we act out the same tales, over and over, the same sets of motions, while time piles up like yarn under a wheel. We like patterns. They’re comforting. Sometimes little things change—a car instead of a house, a girl not named Yelena. But it’s no different, not really. Not ever.

Girls come to the gang for very different reasons than boys. For boys in marginalized communities, they have a gender problem, and they solve it often through gang membership. They find an ability to do masculinity in a way that reasserts their importance in a society that mostly ignores them. For girls, they're coming out of more damaged backgrounds. Their families are often the reason they get propelled into gang membership.

A teenage girl lay asleep on the sofa, curled up under a red-and-black knitted afghan. She was on her side, with one slender arm cradling a throw cushion nestled under her head. Long wavy blond hair spread across her back and her shoulders like a cape. Even though she was sleeping, Alex could see how pretty she was, with her delicate, almost elfin features. He stood in the doorway, watching the soft rise and fall of her chest.

Every form of strength is also a form of weakness,” he once wrote. “Pretty girls tend to become insufferable because, being pretty, their faults are too much tolerated. Possessions entrap men, and wealth paralyzes them. I learned to write because I am one of those people who somehow cannot manage the common communications of smiles and gestures, but must use words to get across things that other people would never need to say.

When I hear from people that religion doesn't hurt anything, I say really? Well besides wars, the crusades, the inquisitions, 9-11, ethnic cleansing, the suppression of women, the suppression of homosexuals, fatwas, honor killings, suicide bombings, arranged marriages to minors, human sacrifice, burning witches, and systematic sex with children, I have a few little quibbles. And I forgot blowing up girl schools in Afghanistan.

I was quite intimidated by Ralph Fiennes. I didn't really talk to him while I was doing Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and the only thing I did with him was when he stepped on my head. Then I went to this play and he was there. And this girl said, “you've worked with Ralph Fiennes haven't you, Robert?” and I was like, “well, no...” and Ralph said, “yes, I stepped on your head.” And that was the extent of our conversation.

I relaxed. “I would imagine in your world, girls are much different than here in the real world. I’m sure if you spent some time with the everyday girl, you would find I am not unique.” He grinned at me. “The everyday girl is who writes me fan mail and buys out my concerts. They are the girls who yell my name and run after me like crazed animals. You’ve not even tried to sneak into my room and squirt your perfume on my pillow.

What a good thing, for instance, it was that one princess should sleep for a hundred years! Was she not saved from all the plague of young men who were not worthy of her? And did not she come awake exactly at the right moment when the right prince kissed her? For my part, I cannot help wishing a good many girls would sleep till just the same fate overtook them. It would be happier for them, and more agreeable to their friends.

My dad one time told me, he was like, 'The only time you should lie is when someone's holding a gun to your head and says 'Okay, lie or I'm going to shoot you.' And that really stuck with me. I think about that a lot. I used to not be really honest with girls and then I dropped a song called "Starry Room" and then I started turning over a new leaf. Now, I'm completely honest with girls all the time and they just get mad at me.

A certain person wondered why a big strong girl like me wouldn't keep a job which paid a normal salary. I took my time to lead her and to read her every page. Even minimal people can't survive on minimal wage. A certain person wondered why I wait all week for you. I didn't have the words to describe just what you do. I said you had the motion of the ocean in your walk, and when you solve my riddles you don't even have to talk.

I know also another man who married a widow with several children; and when one of the girls had grown into her teens he insisted on marrying her also, having first by some means won her affections. The mother, however, was much opposed to this marriage, and finally gave up her husband entirely to her daughter; and to this very day the daughter bears children to her stepfather, living as wife in the same house with her mother!

This crazy little party girl who loves to enjoy life actually has a purpose. So, that's really the core of why I've survived so many years and I can go and I can fall down and I can get back up. Why? Because I know why I'm here. That's the question that a lot of people need to answer when they do fall is, 'Why am I here?' If you can answer that question, you'll be able to dust yourself off and shine like a phoenix out of ashes.

In my own case, I had to train myself out of that phony smile, which is like a nervous tic on every teenage girl. And this meant that I smiled rarely, for in truth, when it came down to real smiling, I had less to smile about. My 'dream' action for the women's liberation movement: a smile boycott, at which declaration all women would instantly abandon their 'pleasing' smiles, henceforth smiling only when something pleased them.

And there she was, alone and walking out in the cornfield while everyone else I cared for sat together in one room. She would always feel me and think of me. I could see that, but there was no longer anything I could do. Ruth had been a girl haunted and now she would be a woman haunted. First by accident and now by choice. All of it, the story of my life and death, was hers if she chose tot ell it, even to one person at a time.

For the last year and a half, I went from being a crazy workout girl to sort of saying, "My body wants a little bit a of break." So I kind of stay with more simple stuff and taking walks and not being neurotic about working out and eating right. I started to enjoy life a little bit more. The only downside to that is there's that couple extra pounds and about 4,000 pregnancy rumors, but you know, other than that, it feels great.

His heart beat faster and faster as Daisy’s white face came up to his own. He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God. So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning fork that had been struck upon a star. Then he kissed her. At his lips’ touch she blossomed like a flower and the incarnation was complete.

Everybody deserves fair treatment, equal treatment in the eyes of the law and the state. And that includes gays, lesbians, transgender persons. I am not a fan of discrimination and bullying of anybody on the basis of race, on the basis of religion, on the basis of sexual orientation or gender. This is actually part and parcel of the agenda that's also going to be front and centre, and that is how are we treating women and girls.

I came from an educated, upper middle-class family. My mother was a Persian and history teacher at a large high school for girls. Many of the women in my extended family and in our circle of friends were professionals. In those days, women were a vital part of the economy in Kabul. They worked as lawyers, physicians, college professors, etc., which makes the tragedy of how they were treated by the Taliban that much more painful.

Growing up, you're told there are things you're not capable of doing because you're a girl. That perception's starting to change and it's amazing. It's important that we continue to share the message with other young women. If they grow up in a household or go to a school where they're told that they can't do certain things, it's important that they hear from someone that it is possible to do whatever they want with their lives.

One of those strange things that happens in movies is that you need someone to actually say people's names, or else you have no idea who those kids are. This was a way for her to introduce who the important boys were in the story, but then it just was so funny that it became a centerpiece to it. When you look at the character design that Tim did for Weird Girl, and what Catherine [O'Hara] did with the voice, and it's gonna kill.

I do read some of the scripts from America and, even though the themes or subject of the film is very interesting, and some of the scenes are very interesting, there is a tendency that they have to explain everything. There will be no dilemma. This guy was evil, and this girl was very sweet. And in the end, we'd have to see eight endings because we'd also have to know what happened to the uncle. It's like, "Are you kidding me?!"

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