" I used to try to be cool. I said things that I didn't believe about other people, and celebrities, and myself; I wrote mean jokes for cheap, "edgy" laughs; I neglected good friendships for shallow ones; I insisted I wasn't a feminist; I nodded along with casual misogyny in hopes that shitty dudes would like me.

I thought I was immune to its woo-woo power, but if it hadn't been for menses tent, how long would it have taken me to understand that I get to choose what kind of person to be? Open or closed? Generous or cruel? Spirit jaguar or clinging ghost? A lazy writer (it's easy to hate things) or a versatile one? I don't believe in an afterlife. We live and then we stop living. We exist and then we stop existing. That means I only get one chance to do a good job. I want to do a good job. "

― Lindy West , Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman