"I'm good at science because I'm good at listening.  I have been told I am intelligent, and I have been told that I am simple-minded.  I have been told that I am trying to do too much, and I have been told that I can't do what I want to do because I am a woman, and I have been told that I have only been allowed to do what I have done because I am a woman.  I have been told that I can have eternal life, and I have been told that I will burn myself out into an early death.  I have been admonished for being too feminine and I have been distrusted for being too masculine.  I have been warned that I am far too sensitive and I have been accused of being heartlessly callous.  But I was told all of these things by people who can't understand the present or see the future any better than I can.  Such recurrent pronouncements have forced me to accept that because I am a female scientist, anybody knows what the hell I am, and it has given me the delicious freedom to make it up as I go along.  I don't take advice from my colleagues, and I try not to give it.  When I am pressed, I resort to these two sentences:  You shouldn't take this job too seriously.  Except for when you should."
-Lab Girl by Hope Jahren

"But for the most part, it's the rest of the sharp and rigid world that wants to drown you, knock your teeth out, cave your skull in when you're going down.  I develop a new consciousness, at all times wondering, What am I near?  What would it do to my body if I fell on it/into it right now?  I learn you can't trust coffee table corners, rooftop edges.  You can't trust urinals either - massive grinning underbites that would get a good laugh out of leaving me to be discovered unconscious, pants down, molars scattered across the linoleum.  Hard things, tall things, and wet things - double-crossing murders.  Bathtubs are my personal nemesis though - hard, wet, and untrustworthy.  Porcelain caskets.  For a while we crack the doors during my baths so my parents can rush in if they hear splashing.  Then I switch to showers altogether."
-How To Ruin Everything by George Watsky