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1 " The TypeEveryone needs a place. It shouldn't be inside of someone else. -Richard SikenIf you grow up the type of woman men want to look at,you can let them look at you. But do not mistake eyes for hands.Or windows.Or mirrors.Let them see what a woman looks like.They may not have ever seen one before.If you grow up the type of woman men want to touch,you can let them touch you.Sometimes it is not you they are reaching for.Sometimes it is a bottle. A door. A sandwich. A Pulitzer. Another woman.But their hands found you first. Do not mistake yourself for a guardian.Or a muse. Or a promise. Or a victim. Or a snack.You are a woman. Skin and bones. Veins and nerves. Hair and sweat.You are not made of metaphors. Not apologies. Not excuses.If you grow up the type of woman men want to hold,you can let them hold you.All day they practice keeping their bodies upright--even after all this evolving, it still feels unnatural, still strains the muscles,holds firm the arms and spine. Only some men will want to learnwhat it feels like to curl themselves into a question mark around you,admit they do not have the answersthey thought they would have by now;some men will want to hold you like The Answer.You are not The Answer.You are not the problem. You are not the poemor the punchline or the riddle or the joke.Woman. If you grow up the type men want to love,You can let them love you.Being loved is not the same thing as loving.When you fall in love, it is discovering the oceanafter years of puddle jumping. It is realizing you have hands.It is reaching for the tightrope when the crowds have all gone home.Do not spend time wondering if you are the type of womanmen will hurt. If he leaves you with a car alarm heart, you learn to sing along.It is hard to stop loving the ocean. Even after it has left you gasping, salty.Forgive yourself for the decisions you have made, the ones you still callmistakes when you tuck them in at night. And know this:Know you are the type of woman who is searching for a place to call yours.Let the statues crumble.You have always been the place.You are a woman who can build it yourself.You were born to build. "
― Sarah Kay
2 " If you leave off looking at books about beasts and men, if you begin to look at beasts and men then (if you have any humour or imagination, any sense of the frantic or the farcical) you will observe that the startling thing is not how like man is to the brutes, but how unlike he is. It is the monstrous scale of his divergence that requires an explanation. That man and brute are like is, in a sense, a truism; but that being so like they should then be so insanely unlike, that is the shock and the enigma. That an ape has hands is far less interesting to the philosopher than the fact that having hands he does next to nothing with them; does not play knuckle-bones or the violin; does not carve marble or carve mutton. People talk of barbaric architecture and debased art. But elephants do not build colossal temples of ivory even in a roccoco style; camels do not paint even bad pictures, though equipped with the material of many camel's-hair brushes. Certain modern dreamers say that ants and bees have a society superior to ours. They have, indeed, a civilization; but that very truth only reminds us that it is an inferior civilization. Who ever found an ant-hill decorated with the statues of celebrated ants? Who has seen a bee-hive carved with the images of gorgeous queens of old? No; the chasm between man and other creatures may have a natural explanation, but it is a chasm. We talk of wild animals; but man is the only wild animal. It is man that has broken out. All other animals are tame animals; following the rugged respectability of the tribe or type. All other animals are domestic animals; man alone is ever undomestic, either as a profligate or a monk. So that this first superficial reason for materialism is, if anything, a reason for its opposite; it is exactly where biology leaves off that all religion begins. "
― G.K. Chesterton , Orthodoxy
3 " a brief history of artCave paintings. Clay then bronze statues. Then for about 1,400 years, people painted nothing except bold but rudimentary pictures of either the Virgin Mary and Child or the Crucifixion. Some bright spark realised that things in the distance looked smaller and the pictures of the Virgin Mary and the Crucifixion improved hugely. Suddenly everyone was good at hands and facial expression and now the statues were in marble. Fat cherubs started appearing, while elsewhere there was a craze for domestic interiors and women standing by windows doing needlework. Dead pheasants and bunches of grapes and lots of detail. Cherubs disappeared and instead there were fanciful, idealised landscapes, then portraits of aristocrats on horseback, then huge canvasses of battles and shipwrecks. Then it was back to women lying on sofas or getting out of the bath, murkier this time, less detailed then a great many wine bottles and apples, then ballet dancers. Paintings developed a certain splodginess - critical term - so that they barely resembled what they were meant to be. Someone signed a urinal, and it all went mad. Neat squares of primary colour were followed by great blocks of emulsion, then soup cans, then someone picked up a video camera, someone else poured concrete, and the whole thing became hopelessly fractured into a kind of confusing, anything-goes free for all. "
― David Nicholls
4 " If you grow up the type of woman men want to look at,You can let them look at you.But do not mistake eyes for hands,Or windows for mirrors.Let them see what a woman looks like.They may not have ever seen one before.If you grow up the type of woman men want to touch,You can let them touch you.Sometimes it is not you they are reaching for.Sometimes it is a bottle, a door, a sandwich, a Pulitzer, another woman –But their hands found you first.Do not mistake yourself for a guardian, or a muse, or a promise, or a victim or a snack.You are a woman –Skin and bones, veins and nerves, hair and sweatYou are not made of metaphors,Not apologies, not excuses.If you grow up the type of woman men want to hold,You can let them hold you.All day they practice keeping their bodies upright.Even after all this evolving it still feels unnatural,Still strains the muscles, holds firm the arms and spine.Only some men will want to learn what it feels like to curl themselves into a question mark around you,Admit they don’t have the answers they thought they would by now.Some men will want to hold you like the answer.You are not the answer.You are not the problem.You are not the poem, or the punchline, or the riddle, or the joke.Woman, if you grow up the type of woman men want to love,You can let them love you.Being loved is not the same thing as loving.When you fall in love,It is discovering the ocean after years of puddle jumping.It is realising you have hands.It is reaching for the tightrope after the crowds have all gone home.Do not spend time wondering if you are the type of woman men will hurt.If he leaves you with a car alarm heart.You learn to sing along.It is hard to stop loving the ocean,Even after it’s left you gasping, salty.So forgive yourself for the decisions you’ve made,The ones you still call mistakes when you tuck them in at night,And know this.Know you are the type of woman who is searching for a place to call yours.Let the statues crumble.You have always been the place.You are a woman who can build it yourself.You are born to build. "
5 " Let the statues crumble. You have always been the place. "
― Sarah Kay , The Type
6 " The moonlight covered the tombstones with an ethereal glow, and the statues above the tombs stood like silent guards waiting for something to happen. "
― Alan Kinross , Longinus The Vampire
7 " The word spread. It began with the techno-literates: young summoners who couldn’t quite get their containment circles right and who had fallen back on Facebook to keep themselves occupied while the sacred incense was cooked in their mum’s microwaves; eager diviners who scoured the internet for clues as to the future of tomorrow, and who read the truth of things in the static at the corners of the screen; bored vampires who knew that it was too early to go out and hunt, too late still to be in the coffin. The message was tweeted and texted onwards, sent out through the busy wires of the city, from laptop to PC, PC to Mac, from mobile phones the size of old breeze blocks through to palm-held devices that not only received your mail, but regarded it as their privilege to sort it into colour-coordinated categories for your consideration. The word was whispered between the statues that sat on the imperial buildings of Kingsway, carried in the scuttling of the rats beneath the city streets, flashed from TV screen to TV screen in the flickering windows of the shuttered electronics stores, watched over by beggars and security cameras, and the message said: We are Magicals Anonymous. We are going to save the city. "
― Kate Griffin , Stray Souls (Magicals Anonymous, #1)
8 " But one gets tired of everything, even of abusing a person. Paris abandons its puppets which it raises to the throne as quickly as it does its martyrs whom it hoists on the gibbet; in its perpetual hunger for new playthings, it never gets itself excited overly much before the statues of its heroes or at the sight of the blood of its victims. "
― Octave Mirbeau , Le Calvaire
9 " I looked at some of the statues of Jesus; they were just stones with no life. When they said that God is three, I was puzzled even more but could not argue. I believed it, simply because I had to have respect for the faith of my parents. "
