32 Quotes by Kiana Davenport

This was the wisdom of a woman with little education. It gave me carte blanche in a house with no books.

They were among the few surviving comfort women -- an estimated 90 percent had been killed while imprisoned. During that emotional lecture I thought of the girl who had disappeared in Shanghai and wanted to explore the possibility that this might have been her fate.

We must live. Or what have we suffered for? Will these years have been for nothing?

The diaries also revealed a deeply sensitive, intelligent woman, one who had hoped to start a college for Hawaiian women, affording them the ‘same education as men.’ She had planned to open a bank for women, enabling them to handle their own financial affairs. She recognized the need for more female lawyers and physicians, the need for women’s rights over their bodies, and their destinies. And lastly, though she had a fondness for men, she felt women ’basically didn’t need them.

Everything breaks down but desire. And because we are old, doctors try to shame that out of us. Young punks! Lose one’s youth, and doctors take it as axiomatic that you’ve lost your mind, your balls.