Books
There's one good thing you can say for 2017: it has been an amazing year for books. In a year that has often felt like pure, unadulterated chaos, authors have continued to provide inspiration and insight. Even more exciting, this year's new releases were been dominated by female authors, each with their own invaluable thing to say. Here's a taste of the empowering lessons that women authors have brought to us in 2017.
It's no surprise that resilience has been a major theme this year. As you'll see in these quotes, women authors have been delivering powerful thoughts about how to speak out, fight back, and survive even the hardest of circumstances. Many of these quotes will invoke a sense of self-pride, a knowledge that you can withstand anything life throws at you.
Reading this year has been a means of staying strong. Books have been a way to escape, a way to empathize, and a way to rise up against the world's problems. Every reader knows that books are a great way to lift yourself up, even when the odds seem impossible.
Here are some quotes from this year's female authors that are certain to inspire and empower you in 2018:
"Don’t let anyone else take away your joy. If they don’t want to be with you or around you, let them go. Pick up your shit and keep going. You came into the world by yourself, and the next person’s lungs don’t help you breathe."
― Gabourey Sidibe, This Is Just My Face: Try Not to Stare
"Sometimes you can do everything right and things will still go wrong. The key is to never stop doing right."
― Angie Thomas, The Hate U Give
"But life doesn’t often spell things out for you or give you what you want exactly when you want it, otherwise it wouldn’t be called life, it would be called vending machine. It’s hard to say exactly when it will happen, and it’s true that whatever you’re after may not drop down the moment you spend all your quarters, but someday soon a train is coming. In fact, it may already be on the way. You just don’t know it yet."
“Be brave, America. Be soft. Remember to twist the valve sometimes and release all the pressure inside. What you've been through doesn't have to be what you are or who you become.”
― Gabby Rivera, America #3
“Your feminist premise should be: I matter. I matter equally. Not 'if only.' Not 'as long as.' I matter equally. Full stop.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Dear Ijeawele: or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions
"My scars teach me that I am stronger than what caused them."
― Manal Al-Sharif, Daring to Drive: A Saudi Woman’s Awakening
"Working hard feels good. Of course it’s exhausting and stressful and causes you to miss a party or two, but at the end of the day it is so rewarding. One of the best feelings in the world is when you know that luck didn’t play a role in your success. Doing work eliminates the need for luck. I’m not lucky, I just took the stairs. And you should too.”
― Lilly Singh, How to Be a Bawse: A Guide to Conquering Life
"You’re gonna let the world happen to you, and you’re gonna love it.”
― Kayla Rae Whitaker, The Animators
“There is such strength in being a woman. But it is a strength you must choose for yourself. No one can choose it for you. We can bend the wind to our ear if we would only try.”
― Renée Ahdieh, Flame in the Mist
"I feel like I need to speak out, because if no one speaks out, if no one says, this is me, this is what I believe in, and this is why I'm different, and this is why that's okay, then what's the point? What's the point of living in this beautiful, great melting pot where everyone can dare be anything they want to be?”
― Sandhya Menon, When Dimple Met Rishi
