After reading Kate Bolick's memoir about being a single woman, "Spinster", I decided to read the authors she lists as her inspirations who I hadn't read yet. First step: "Age of Innocence," one of those classics I somehow missed in my English undergrad years.

It should not have taken me so long to read this amazing book.

"To be a stranger is to be looked at. To be black is to be looked at especially."

"I want the you no one else can see, the you so close the third person need never apply."

"I feel so awkward and ugly and naive and lonely. Maybe I should kill myself maybe I should paint a picture. I always want to be touched. I don't know what's wrong with me." I wish I had read this book when I was younger, although now is good too. I think any age is the right time to read it.

"And after a while, fragments began to piece themselves together in his mind, of the missing Marta, of the danger, of how not long ago everyone had been searching for her. But already these recollections were growing confused, in much the way a dream does in the seconds after waking . . ."

An excerpt from the essay "Dispatch from the Post-Rape Future" by Maya Dusenbery. My favorite so far in this collection of art, fiction, and essays that imagine what a feminist world might look like.

This book makes me want to sit down with a pen and my journal and do some memory recall. I can feel the healing powers of art and self-reflection as I flip through this amazing book.

"Something weird happened. A person said that he was sorry to hear I'm still having panic attacks. He hopes I feel better soon.

It was weird to hear someone express sympathy for mental illness in the way they might for physical illness...Scientifically, this shit is real."