There is always something taboo, something repressed, un-admitted, or just glimpsed quickly out of the corner of one’s eye because a direct look is too unsettling. Taboos lie within taboos, like the skin of an...

I touched his hand, carefully. Not too intimate, but not some half-assed there-there pat, either. Would he understand? Usually the thought process for a seventeen-year-old boy went girl touching me>omg>boner.

I’ve never been with a man before.

Fight for change? Thirst for difference?Start talking what men avoid talking about.

I refuse to believe that all men are pigs and women competing whores.

And I wouldn’t have had it any other way.

She started thinking about all the euphemisms for death, all the anxious taboos that had always fascinated her. It was too bad you could never have an intelligent discussion on the subject. People were either...

I refuse to believe all men are pigs and women competing whores.-ANASTASIA

She had assumed they would see each other every day but she hadn’t really thought about the implications of having an affair with a married man. It wasn’t going to be a normal relationship.

How can we pick and choose which parts of the Bible to follow? One thing is God’s will and another is just cultural differences? What if it’s all cultural? What if homosexuality or saving yourself...

When people have tried everything and have discovered that nothing works, they will tend to revert to what they know best—which will often be the tribe, the totem, or the taboo.

I felt like an animal, and animals don’t know sin, do they?

He methodically basted the dark skin of the Alsatian, which he had stuffed with garlic and herbs.”One rule in life”, he murmured to himself. “If you can smell garlic, everything is all right”.

The conflict between the will to deny horrible events and the will to proclaim them aloud is the central dialectic of psychological trauma.

Though what is as sexy, as sweetly taboo as money? So secret, so unspeakable even among dear friends? How much did daddy leave you? How much did you get for that painting? How did you...

That’s the funny thing about religion: it doesn’t matter what you say, you’re going to upset someone.

He says, “I would walk around the township and I could point them out, which girls had been abused. You could see it in them. There’s a luminosity to incest. The taboo is so strong...

But did he know that I’d already forgiven him for having rejected me?

I don’t know why it’s still a taboo to be a feminist.

I have also figured out that for many people death is a difficult subject, not at all as simple as it is for me.

Actually, nothing hurts like hearing the word slut, unless it is hearing the word rape dropped about carelessly. Again, a word I wouldn’t have thought much about, except that when I was in high school...

I’m interested in things women do that aren’t spoken about. Manto’s stories let me breathe. They make me feel like less of a monster.

I am not sure if we are numbed to the reality of rape, but here’s the sad irony. While the word rape can add an edginess to your language, talking about actual rape is taboo....

If you think you can stand looking and not touching for eight months, you’re welcome to try.””Try’ being the operative word,” he said, sighing. “No, I can’t. And I don’t want to try.

Stigma’s power lies in silence. The silence that persists when discussion and action should be taking place. The silence one imposes on another for speaking up on a taboo subject, branding them with a label...