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"She told me that women who wore makeup had bad values. Putting on makeup would have been a statement-a rebellion. I didn't try it. I grew to feel guilty for wanting to feel attractive."
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"You've got to vote for someone. It's a shame, but it's got to be done."

"I was ashamed of myself for being ashamed of myself. I didn't like feeling like that."

"We would not be ashamed of doing some of the things we do in private, if the number of sane human beings who do them in public were large enough."

"Shame weakens us. It can make us frightened to take on something new. We start to withdraw from whatever might give us pleasure, self-esteem, or a sense of our value."

"Nobody can stop you but you. And shame on you if you're the one who stops yourself."

"And then I turn another corner, and my chest constricts so tightly, so painfully, that I can no longer breathe. Because there he is. He's engrossed in an oversize book, hunched over and completely absorbed. A breeze ruffles his dark hair, and he bites his nails. . . . Several other people are soaking up the rare sunshine, but as soon as they're registered, they're forgotten. Because of him. I grip the edge of a sidewalk café table to keep from falling. The diners stare in alarm, but I don't care. I'm reeling, and I gasp for air. How can I have been so stupid? How could I have ever for a moment believed I wasn't in love with him?"
Explore more quotes by Aspen Matis

"These tools were my parents' way of saying: What you're doing is important. We support it. We want to help you find your way."

"I made a conscious effort to name my needs and desires. To carefully listen to and accurately identify what I felt. Hunger, exhaustion, cold, lower-back ache, thirst. The ephemeral pangs: wistfulness and loneliness. Rest fixed most things. Sleep was my sweet reward. I treated bedtime as both incentive and sacrament."

"I wanted him to declare in shock how overlooked and underestimated I had been ever since I was a child. How lucky he felt to be the one to have discovered me, to have me. I wanted him to look at me like maybe I was magic."

"I realized that the most empowering important thing was actually simply taking care of myself."

"He hadn't treated me with the love and compassion I wanted, but I was worthy of that love, and someday some boy would have it for me. I hadn't found it yet, but I would find it soon."

"I didn't know what I would do. There was no way I could survive. I stared at my damp tent ceiling, feeling the frigid air against me, the frozen ground against my bottom, so cold my bare skin burned. I needed to get to the next trail-town, Mammoth Lakes. There was no one here to save me now."

"And so, despite the complex web of paths, waterfalls, cliffs, as a hiker wanders downhill, drainages merge, faint, abstract paths coalesce, thicken, until there is one path " the one, natural, trodden way."
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