Francesca Penchant

“If they knock you down, you get up. If they knock you down again, get up. No matter how many times they knock you down, get up again.”

“Trust in what you love, continue to do it, and it will take you where you need to go.”

“Writing needs raw truth, wants your suffering and darkness ... revels in a cutting mind that takes no prisoners....”

“There is freedom in being a writer and writing. It is fulfilling your function. I used to think freedom meant doing whatever you want. It means knowing who you are, what you are supposed to be doing on this earth, and then simply doing it.”

I'm a feminist, and I really liked this book. The author dares to say that female and male brains are different, which helps to expand the field of brain research. For decades, scientists tested drugs on male subjects only, assuming that they would have the same reactions in women. This is like having “a jury of your peers” filled with twelve white men. I'm not sure if I would've liked this book in my twenties, but since then, my ideas about feminism aren't as strict. That said, there were some generalizations about women in the book that annoyed me, but I guess I assumed that with a book like this, you have to make some generalizations about the majority of women's brains.