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I had given up on being beautiful. But I thought I could kind of inspire boys to write songs about me. So I became a music journalist at the age of 16.
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You are educated equally to boys. You're expected to go into equal employment with boys. In a marriage, you are legally equal. So, you know, you cannot deny we live in a feminist world.
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I am fully aware of what the word 'fat' means ... It's a swear word. It's a weapon. It's a sociological subspecies. It's an accusation, dismissal, and rejection.
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Feminism has had exactly the same problem that "political correctness" has had: people keep using the phrase without really knowing what it means.
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I can only work between the hours of 8:30 and 4:30, because that's when the kids are at school. So I get to do all my work and have all of my fun in that time, which means just sitting on a chair, typing, alternately clicking between writing a column and being on Twitter, and smoking as many cigarettes as I can before my lungs give out.
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You wanted to become a doctor to help people and feel better at the end of your job, I think, watching them, as the nurse takes my hand. But I don't think you do feel better at the end of the day. You look like humans have constantly disappointed you.
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When I hear women talking about how their wedding is going to be/was the best day of their life, I can’t help but think, You just haven’t taken enough MDMA in a field at 3 a.m., love.
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For me, and I suspect a lot of socially awkward people, dealing with people face-to-face seems really traumatic. Particularly if you have massive sweating issues, and particularly if on top of that you have quite smelly sweat that smells like onion soup.
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I read something once that when you're online, your inhibitions are lowered to the state where you've had three drinks. Once you basically know that the entire internet is slightly drunk, it all makes a lot more sense, and you deport yourself accordingly.
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Whenever I see a taboo, I just think that's something we need to drag screaming out into the light and discuss. Because taboos are where our fears live, and taboos are the things that keep us tiny. Particularly for women.
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All the things that are taboo are the things that are not normal, and all the things that are not normal are the things that are exclusively about physically being a woman.
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When you've got a mother who's given birth to eight children, you know, often without any kind of medical intervention - just she gave birth to one of my brothers sort of on the bedroom floor in front of all of us -you know, you see that women are fairly capable.
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A library in the middle of a community is a cross between an emergency exit, a life raft and a festival.
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Never feel this bad again. Never come back to this place, where only a knife will do. Live a gentle and kind life. Don't do things that make you want to hurt yourself.
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I have a rule for working out if the root problem of something is, in fact, sexism. And it is this: asking 'Are the boys doing it? Are the boys having to worry about this stuff? Are the boys the centre of a gigantic global debate on this subject?
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You can always tell when a woman is with the wrong man, because she has so much to say about the fact that nothing's happening.
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There's something so free about being a fan and being enthusiastic about stuff - you attract all the other people who are also loving and enthusiastic when you're sending out signals of love. When you start to communicate cynicism and hatred, it leads you down a completely different path.
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When you talk to a young teenage girl, they're just full of self-loathing. The reason they feel self-loathing is they don't feel normal. It is a world that has not been built for them. It's been built for men, and that's why they feel bad.
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I think loads of women have this idea that their life is going to start at some point, once they've busted all these problems of being a woman, once we're thin and we're pretty and we've got all of our clothes and stuff, that's when our life will begin. And you meet people at 48 who are still thinking that, and 58.
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A library in the middle of a community is a cross between an emergency exit, a life raft and a festival. They are cathedrals of the mind; hospitals of the soul; theme parks of the imagination. On a cold, rainy island, they are the only sheltered public spaces where you are not a consumer, but a citizen, instead.
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It's really best not to tell people when you feel bad. Growing up is about keeping secrets, and pretending everything is fine.
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I don't want children anyway,' Caz says. 'So I'm getting nothing out of this whatsoever. I want my entire reproductive system taken out, and replaced with spare lungs, for when I start smoking. I want that option. This is pointless.
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I am in love, and he's the one. Obviously I thought the one before him was the one and the one before that was the one, too. Frankly, I'm so much into the idea of being in love that anyone out of about 3 million could be the one. But no, this one now is definitely the one, the very one.
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If I'm going to spunk £500 on a pair of designer shoes, it's going to be a pair that I can a) dance to 'Bad Romance' in and b) will allow me to run away from a murderer, should one suddenly decide to give chase.