[b]Margaret Atwood from The Testaments
We were custodians of an invaluable treasure that existed, unseen, inside us; we were precious flowers that had to be kept safely inside glass houses, or else we would be ambushed and our petals would be torn off and our treasure would be stolen and we would be ripped apart and trampled by the ravenous men who might lurk around any corner, out there in the wide sharp-edged sin-ridden world.[/b]
Either that or [for some] new meat.
You’ll be looking to make a niche for yourself in whatever dim, echoing caverns of academia may still exist by your time.
Philosophers in particular, right?
The adult female body was one big booby trap as far as I could tell. If there was a hole, something was bound to be shoved into it and something else was bound to come out, and that went for any kind of hole: a hole in a wall, a hole in a mountain, a hole in the ground. There were so many things that could be done to it or go wrong with it, this adult female body, that I was left feeling I would be better off without it.
Of course men have a few holes too. But point taken.
The muscles of my face were beginning to hurt. Under some conditions, smiling is a workout.
Not unlike a grimace.
But sins must not be overlooked simply because the sinner is skilled.
Lots of loopholes though.
Such regrets are of no practical use. I made choices, and then, having made them, I had fewer choices. Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and I took the one most travelled by. It was littered with corpses, as such roads are. But as you will have noticed, my own corpse is not among them.
Of course that was then.