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Top 70 Melissa Febos Quotes (2026 Update)
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Melissa Febos Quote: “Say the ape, the Eurasian magpie, or the elephant looks in the mirror and recognizes the paint smeared on her body by the researcher. The animal who passes the mirror test then investigates her own body for the offending mark. Say she finds nothing. How long before she trusts the reflection over her own body? Say the mark on her reflection is confirmed by all the other elephants. How long before her reflection replaces herself? Say the mark is not of paint but instead a word applied to her.”

51. “Say the ape, the Eurasian magpie, or the elephant looks in the mirror and recognizes the paint smeared on her body by the researcher. The animal who passes the mirror test then investigates her own body for the offending mark. Say she finds nothing. How long before she trusts the reflection over her own body? Say the mark on her reflection is confirmed by all the other elephants. How long before her reflection replaces herself? Say the mark is not of paint but instead a word applied to her.”

— Melissa Febos

Melissa Febos Quote: “I know the impossibility of the hickey, whose urge is not ultimately to mark or to be marked, but to possess and be possessed. I cannot render anything precisely in words, as I cannot crush my lover’s body inside of mine. All I can do is leave a mark – the notation of my effort, a symbol for the thing. That is the endless pleasure and frustration of the writer and the lover: to reach and reach and never become.”

52. “I know the impossibility of the hickey, whose urge is not ultimately to mark or to be marked, but to possess and be possessed. I cannot render anything precisely in words, as I cannot crush my lover’s body inside of mine. All I can do is leave a mark – the notation of my effort, a symbol for the thing. That is the endless pleasure and frustration of the writer and the lover: to reach and reach and never become.”

— Melissa Febos

Melissa Febos Quote: “Seeing the East River beside us, so gorgeous and contaminated, was like bumping into an ex you’re still in love with. The city wasn’t mine anymore, and it hurt to see it looking so beautiful and so familiar.”

53. “Seeing the East River beside us, so gorgeous and contaminated, was like bumping into an ex you’re still in love with. The city wasn’t mine anymore, and it hurt to see it looking so beautiful and so familiar.”

— Melissa Febos

Melissa Febos Quote: “You had a patriarchy attack! Like a panic attack or a heart attack – but a patriarchy attack.” She shook her head now as we remembered the incident. “Patriarchy colonizes our brains like a virus,” she said. It was an apt comparison. Like a virus, patriarchy harms the systems that it infects and relies on replication to survive. It flourishes in those who are not aware of its presence, and sometimes even in those actively working to expel it.”

54. “You had a patriarchy attack! Like a panic attack or a heart attack – but a patriarchy attack.” She shook her head now as we remembered the incident. “Patriarchy colonizes our brains like a virus,” she said. It was an apt comparison. Like a virus, patriarchy harms the systems that it infects and relies on replication to survive. It flourishes in those who are not aware of its presence, and sometimes even in those actively working to expel it.”

— Melissa Febos

Melissa Febos Quote: “To be human meant that unlike in most other species, females were the cultivators of meticulous plumage. We competed to be the weakest and smallest and most infantile. We seemed to spend all of our resources withering ourselves to be attractive to males. The goal was to be as soft and tidy and delicate as possible. It made no sense at all. I was not in the habit of withering myself. I was not tidy or delicate.”

55. “To be human meant that unlike in most other species, females were the cultivators of meticulous plumage. We competed to be the weakest and smallest and most infantile. We seemed to spend all of our resources withering ourselves to be attractive to males. The goal was to be as soft and tidy and delicate as possible. It made no sense at all. I was not in the habit of withering myself. I was not tidy or delicate.”

— Melissa Febos

Melissa Febos Quote: “Writing is a form of freedom more accessible than many.”

56. “Writing is a form of freedom more accessible than many.”

— Melissa Febos

Melissa Febos Quote: “I have since learned that recognizing the invisible parts of oneself in another person can feel like a radiant kind of love.”

57. “I have since learned that recognizing the invisible parts of oneself in another person can feel like a radiant kind of love.”

— Melissa Febos

Melissa Febos Quote: “I’ll say it again, because it bears repeating: the resistance to memoirs about trauma is always in part – and often nothing but – a resistance to movements for social justice.”

58. “I’ll say it again, because it bears repeating: the resistance to memoirs about trauma is always in part – and often nothing but – a resistance to movements for social justice.”

— Melissa Febos

Melissa Febos Quote: “I had made a choice to tell the world the things I couldn’t talk about. In doing so, I had forced myself to talk about them, though I still barely could with her. My choice revealed those things to her and simultaneously forced her to have a conversation with the world. Even more unfair, I didn’t want to know about it. I couldn’t even bare to listen.”

59. “I had made a choice to tell the world the things I couldn’t talk about. In doing so, I had forced myself to talk about them, though I still barely could with her. My choice revealed those things to her and simultaneously forced her to have a conversation with the world. Even more unfair, I didn’t want to know about it. I couldn’t even bare to listen.”

— Melissa Febos

Melissa Febos Quote: “Instead of criminal, women’s bodies are inherently defective, aesthetically defective. To the body whose value is judged almost solely on aesthetics, it is a devastating sentence. We are too short, too tall, too fat, too thin, too dark, too stiff, too loose, too solicitous, too yielding, too assertive, too weak, or too strong.”

60. “Instead of criminal, women’s bodies are inherently defective, aesthetically defective. To the body whose value is judged almost solely on aesthetics, it is a devastating sentence. We are too short, too tall, too fat, too thin, too dark, too stiff, too loose, too solicitous, too yielding, too assertive, too weak, or too strong.”

— Melissa Febos

Melissa Febos Quote: “I was not a little mother or a hot mama. I was an eleven-year-old girl. Now, it seems to me a startlingly efficient way to age a child in a single word. Sometimes the word itself matters less than the authority with which it is spoken. It is the act of naming that claims you.”

61. “I was not a little mother or a hot mama. I was an eleven-year-old girl. Now, it seems to me a startlingly efficient way to age a child in a single word. Sometimes the word itself matters less than the authority with which it is spoken. It is the act of naming that claims you.”

— Melissa Febos

Melissa Febos Quote: “I have found that a fulfilling writing life is one in which the creative process merges with the other necessary processes of good living, which only the individual can define.”

62. “I have found that a fulfilling writing life is one in which the creative process merges with the other necessary processes of good living, which only the individual can define.”

— Melissa Febos

Melissa Febos Quote: “It was a belief and a set of behaviors so deeply implanted in me that it resided beneath my intellectual functioning. I had “known” better for years. Knowing that we’ve been conditioned doesn’t undo it.”

63. “It was a belief and a set of behaviors so deeply implanted in me that it resided beneath my intellectual functioning. I had “known” better for years. Knowing that we’ve been conditioned doesn’t undo it.”

— Melissa Febos

Melissa Febos Quote: “It reminded me of the anxiety I feel whenever I set a boundary with a friend or colleague. If they receive it gracefully or demonstrate their respect for it, I often fight an urge to express my “gratitude” by erasing the boundary.”

64. “It reminded me of the anxiety I feel whenever I set a boundary with a friend or colleague. If they receive it gracefully or demonstrate their respect for it, I often fight an urge to express my “gratitude” by erasing the boundary.”

— Melissa Febos

Melissa Febos Quote: “Wanted was the only thing I was sure I ought to be.”

65. “Wanted was the only thing I was sure I ought to be.”

— Melissa Febos

Melissa Febos Quote: “Though I felt gigantic, I wasn’t. It was not the first time I mistook the feeling for the object, and not the last. This is what happens when you give your body away, or when it gets taken from you. Its physical form becomes impossible to see because your eyes are no longer the expert. Your body is no longer a body but a perceived distance from what a body should be, a condition of never being correct, because being is incorrect. Virtue lies only in the interminable act of erasing yourself.”

66. “Though I felt gigantic, I wasn’t. It was not the first time I mistook the feeling for the object, and not the last. This is what happens when you give your body away, or when it gets taken from you. Its physical form becomes impossible to see because your eyes are no longer the expert. Your body is no longer a body but a perceived distance from what a body should be, a condition of never being correct, because being is incorrect. Virtue lies only in the interminable act of erasing yourself.”

— Melissa Febos

Melissa Febos Quote: “How quickly his desire, when thwarted, turns to hatred.”

67. “How quickly his desire, when thwarted, turns to hatred.”

— Melissa Febos

Melissa Febos Quote: “At its core, maybe every despair is marked by a longing to find a home in oneself.”

68. “At its core, maybe every despair is marked by a longing to find a home in oneself.”

— Melissa Febos

Melissa Febos Quote: “It is joy to be hidden and disaster not to be found.”

69. “It is joy to be hidden and disaster not to be found.”

— Melissa Febos

Melissa Febos Quote: “During fleeting casual sexual encounters, women and girls are expected to place a man’s physical and emotional interests above their own, to assume responsibility for ensuring that they are met. But in committed relationships, they are often expected to do this every minute of their lives.”

70. “During fleeting casual sexual encounters, women and girls are expected to place a man’s physical and emotional interests above their own, to assume responsibility for ensuring that they are met. But in committed relationships, they are often expected to do this every minute of their lives.”

— Melissa Febos

Melissa Febos Quote: “The more I think about it, the more amazed I am that anyone realistically expects young women to easily say no to anything, least of all the sexual desires of men. If I struggle to say no to a lunch invitation, a work request, any number of less fraught entreaties, when I have some pressing personal reason, how can a teenager be expected to stop a man’s hand as it reaches under her clothes? Some do, of course, which seems miraculous.”

71. “The more I think about it, the more amazed I am that anyone realistically expects young women to easily say no to anything, least of all the sexual desires of men. If I struggle to say no to a lunch invitation, a work request, any number of less fraught entreaties, when I have some pressing personal reason, how can a teenager be expected to stop a man’s hand as it reaches under her clothes? Some do, of course, which seems miraculous.”

— Melissa Febos

Melissa Febos Quote: “Intimacy, I’ve found, has little to do with romance. Maybe it is the opposite of romance, which is based on a story written by someone else. It is a closeness to another person that requires closeness with oneself. It is not watching lightning strike from the window but being struck by it.”

72. “Intimacy, I’ve found, has little to do with romance. Maybe it is the opposite of romance, which is based on a story written by someone else. It is a closeness to another person that requires closeness with oneself. It is not watching lightning strike from the window but being struck by it.”

— Melissa Febos

Melissa Febos Quote: “What we are taught as a practice of beauty, of femininity, is also a practice of submission. A trans woman friend of mine recently explained to me how the technique for training your voice to sound more feminine has a lot to do “with speaking less or asking more questions or deferring to other people more.” We must not exhibit creases in our faces that indicate any critical emotion, because we should not express any critical emotion. Remember: women have been burned to death for as much.”

73. “What we are taught as a practice of beauty, of femininity, is also a practice of submission. A trans woman friend of mine recently explained to me how the technique for training your voice to sound more feminine has a lot to do “with speaking less or asking more questions or deferring to other people more.” We must not exhibit creases in our faces that indicate any critical emotion, because we should not express any critical emotion. Remember: women have been burned to death for as much.”

— Melissa Febos

Melissa Febos Quote: “It is a violent way to emerge, to tell a secret.”

74. “It is a violent way to emerge, to tell a secret.”

— Melissa Febos

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