Girlhood Quotes

“Peach pits are poisonous. This is not a mistake. Girlhood is growing fruit around cyanide. It will never be your for swallowing.”
― Brenna Twohy, Swallowtail

“There is so much woman in many a girl and too much boy in many a man.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Over the fence—
Strawberries— grow—
Over the fence—
I could climb— if I tried, I know—
Berries are nice!

But— if I stained my Apron—
God would certainly scold!
Oh, dear, — I guess if He were a Boy—
He'd— climb— if He could!”
― Emily Dickinson, The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

“All her young life she has tried to please her father, never quite realizing that, as a girl, she never could.”
― Alice Walker

“You are not like other girls. You are not like other girls ("You are not like other girls," the boys you run with will tell you, and you will try not to let them see you preen under the glancing light of their approval). You learn their books and their language. You laugh at their jokes. You listen to their stories, sit blank-eyed on their couched while they play video games, pass them your English notes. You keep their secrets. You use the words they use about other girls in order to assure yourself that they will never use those words about you. You make yourself into nothingness, a ghost conjured into being only through the desires of boys, the rules of boys, the ideas of boys. You're not like other girls.”
― Sarah McCarry, Here We Are

“Just as the sheet nearest to hand takes from a master
The true hasty stroke, just so
The mirror often takes into itself
The sole, the divine laugh of a girl,

As she experiences the morning, alone -
Or in the radiance of attendant candlelight.
And later, when this visage actually breathes,
Gives back only a reflection.

What eyes have not upon occasion gazed
Into the long-smoking embers that fade in the fire:
Life-glimpses, lost forever?”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus

“When is the proper age to shed the moniker 'girl'? Do you stop being one with your first period? Are you an adult once you grow taller than 160 centimeters? When lots of adults don't reach that height anyway? And is it not true that all of our girlhoods are different, not just in terms of physical growth, but in the growth of our hearts and minds?”
― Park Seolyeon, A Magical Girl Retires

“This, yes this, is the animal who never was.
No one ever saw one, but they loved it all the same.
- Its gait, the way it carried itself, its little throat,
The radiance of its quiet gaze, - all were loved.

Truly, it never existed. But yet because they loved it,
A very creature came to be. They always kept a space for it.
And in that space, left clear and free, it readily
Raised its head and thus scarcely required actually

To exist. They nourished it, not with feed,
But merely with the conception that it might come to be.
And they bestowed such intensity upon the beast

That it impelled a horn to grow forth from its brow.
A single horn. It approached an unsullied maiden, all white.
And it is in her silver mirror; it is in her.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus

“Flowers, you who end in close affinity to the arrangers’ hands
(Hands of girls then, hands of girls now),
You who cover the garden table from end to end,
Grown weak, gently injured,

Waiting for water which revives you once more
From a death already commenced - and now
Again taken up between the opposing, sorting
Fingers and their feeling of you, and which can so well

Show you favour, give ease more than you had imagined,
As you recover yourselves in a jug,
Cooling slowly, and the ardour of the girls like confessions

Given up by you, seeping forth like muddy and tiresome sins
You committed by being plucked, - these are another tie between you,
So joined in alliance by both your blossomings.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus

“I realize that they giggle and I actually laugh, that they show their cleavage and I have none to show, but just so you know, I am also a girl.”
― John Green, Let It Snow

“I think in this moment how maybe I’m always all the girls I’ve ever been, how the now-me is just all the old-mes thrown together.”
― Jandy Nelson, When the World Tips Over

“She had a point. I mean, when did my own girlhood begin and end, exactly? I couldn't quite circle a lasso around it, but I knew, at least, when it had ended. Three years ago, when Grandfather died.”
― Park Seolyeon, A Magical Girl Retires

“And a naïve part of me thinks that since we have made it this far, we will make it forever. If we existed for even a second, we could exist eternally.”
― Chloe Michelle Howarth, Sunburn

“That's the thing about girlhood. You and your friends have to take yourselves seriously, because no one else will. We had to keep our emotional behavior to diary pages and fangirl in private, performing at sleepovers on our trundle stages, because it felt like the rest of the world worked overtime to remind us that girlish things were inherently unserious.”
― Kate Kennedy, One in a Millennial: On Friendship, Feelings, Fangirls, and Fitting In

“When I was 11 it was spelled with a Big I. That was how I was taught it. How autocorrect corrected it. Like god to God. It was a place to visit. A proper noun. The Internet. The thinspo forums and videos of Saddam’s execution and the pics from that bat mitzvah I wasn’t invited to. I could go there and I went there that day after school on my clunky white laptop. I went there and I never came back. I went there because it was a world to escape into. I was Lucy walking through the wardrobe. I walked through the fur coats and when I turned around to face the door it was gone. It was like coming a long way through a dark tunnel and turning around to look at the speck of light from which I came, but there was no light. No opening on either side. No sun forcing its way through. No oncoming train. No place from which I came. The tunnel was and always will be my world.”
― Honor Levy

“It was the season of sex, yes, but it was also, in all the vital ways, without sex itself—and isn’t that one useful definition of a happy girlhood?”
― Zadie Smith, Swing Time

“The girl and a horse represented the two races of builders that had initiated the tradition of the future metropolis, both could figure on its coat of arms. The measly function of the girl in her time was an archaic function that is reborn every time a town is formed, her history formed with effort the spirit of a city.”
― Clarice Lispector, The Besieged City

“But without anyone's having forced her to choose the sacrifice, was she losing right then her youth through the symbol of youth? and life through the shape of life, her single hand pointing.”
― Clarice Lispector, The Besieged City

“...girls who made pancakes late at night and cried for faraway mothers, girls who paused doing their makeup to take a delicate inhale off a join waiting in the ashtray. They sat by the windows to get better phone service. They wore hoodies over tight dresses and didn't own suitcases.”
― Emma Cline

“The sun descends as I make my way into the forest, sapphire hues painting the night like a jewel. Lanterns flicker in the distance, guiding me forward.
The spread Amelia has set up is illuminated by tall magenta candles bathing the table with a rosy glow. In the center, there's a tiered cake with vanilla frosting, decorated with pink pansies, marigolds, and violets. Beside it is a summer salad with juicy peaches, soft cheese, and pitted cherries--- a perfect pairing to the bruschetta topped with diced tomatoes. Different fruits are scattered across the table, sliced open to show off their vibrant innards--- blood oranges, figs, and plums.
Everyone is dressed in white with bright flowers crowning their heads. Carmella pours sangria into crystal cups while Yvette helps Amelia string more lights in the trees. Roisin is seated beside Serena, adding tiny braids into her hair and placing daisies between the plaits.”
― Kiana Krystle, Dance of the Starlit Sea

“We're not our worst enemies.
That's what Damien said too. How lucky am I to be in the presence of such grace? Life is more beautiful when we let go of the hate, the anger, the pain. It frees room for tenderness. And here, tonight, the girls collect it like a ritual bath they dive headfirst into. Finally, it washes us clean.
It's Amelia and Yvette, running through the grass as they chase fireflies. It's how Carmella sets the table with a rose on each plate, a special offering for each of us. It's the way Roisin and Serena devour fresh fruit, letting the juice drip down their chins and stain their white dresses as the sun disappears and crickets come alive. It's the butterfly that lands on the table. The slight breeze in the trees. How the world stills and all the girls smile.”
― Kiana Krystle, Dance of the Starlit Sea

“I was wrong. I'm not fire and I'm not Hell. I was always like the sea. Only, in ways I didn't realize before. I used to think the sea was a beauty to admire but not to touch, that below the surface, there was only violence, destruction, and chaos. But that's not true. The sea is also a life source.
Instead of burning out, being made to feel like shells of ourselves emptied against our will, what if we took the pain and made it beautiful? We are art. Living, breathing art. Whatever makes us special still lives within us all.”
― Kiana Krystle, Dance of the Starlit Sea

“I really was just an ordinary girl doing what she thought was right and what others thought was ridiculous.”
― Kailey Bright, Unity

“A countdown was started on my local radio show to my 18th birthday — euphemistically the date that I would be legal to sleep with,” she said. “Movie reviewers talked about my budding breasts in reviews. I understood very quickly, even as a 13-year-old, that if I were to express myself sexually I would feel unsafe and that men would feel entitled to discuss and objectify my body to my great discomfort.”
― - Natalie Portman

“A countdown was started on my local radio show to my 18th birthday — euphemistically the date that I would be legal to sleep with,” she said. “Movie reviewers talked about my budding breasts in reviews. I understood very quickly, even as a 13-year-old, that if I were to express myself sexually I would feel unsafe and that men would feel entitled to discuss and objectify my body to my great discomfort.”
― Natalie Portman

“A countdown was started on my local radio show to my 18th birthday — euphemistically the date that I would be legal to sleep with. Movie reviewers talked about my budding breasts in reviews. I understood very quickly, even as a 13-year-old, that if I were to express myself sexually I would feel unsafe and that men would feel entitled to discuss and objectify my body to my great discomfort.”
― Natalie Portman

“An element of fantasy is needed when falling in love and I was unable to find the fantasy element with any of the male gender.”
― Novala Takemoto, Kamikaze Girls

“But she is also just a child - just a girl waiting to see what her life will be like compared to the lives of the other people she knows.”
― Rita Bullwinkel, Headshot

“Somehow, as we made our entrance into the realm of young womanhood, we began to lose power. Fascinating research on girlhood is happening these days. It confirms that young girls often feel strong, courageous, highly creative, and powerful until they begin to receive undermining sexist messages that encourage them to conform to conventional notions of femininity. To conform they have to give up power.”
― bell hooks, Communion: The Female Search for Love

“The beauty that a woman feels when she is surrounded by a group of supportive and loving girls is like no other.”
― Lekhaa MeenakshiSundaram, I Just Wanna Be A Girl: A Collection of Blogposts