13 Quotes by Janet Benton

The individuals in a family fit together like pieces in a puzzle, forming a larger picture, making clear the nature of the whole and its parts.

So little is permissible for a woman – yet on her back every human climbs to adulthood.

How does a baby know to look its mother in the eyes?

How is it that shame affixes itself to the violated, and not to the violator?

If my spirit is pressed even harder, I wondered, will it yield something marvelous – the spirit’s equivalent to olive oil or the juice of grapes?

Do not be surprised, when thee has children, to find what I have found: of all the kinds of love that bind, a mother’s love for her offspring is the strongest imperative on earth. It is as common as sunlight, as all-penetrating, as necessary to life.

We can pursue our true wants, Mill writes, only when doing so harms no one to whom we are obliged.

As if passion alone explained our predicaments. Our being female and unlucky – and, in my case, a near idiot in the ways of amorous men – must be added to that.

Why had I failed, when all my aims were good?