Nicole Hardy Quotes

#1. That feels like the worst part: denying people hope. I don't know where I'd be if I couldn't even tell myself that any day now, five minutes, or an hour from now, everything will change.

Nicole Hardy

#2. You are the one who takes care of you, I tell myself.

Nicole Hardy

#3. If the second-greatest commandment is to love our fellow man, where is that commandment in this? Dear God, where is the love in this?

Nicole Hardy

#4. This is the kind of behavior that I was dreading: she doesn't see that what she's doing is for her, not me. She doesn't see that it's disrespectful. Dismissive. Condescending. As if my reasons aren't real.

Nicole Hardy

#5. There have to be men out there like us: committed to the Gospel, if not the culture of the church, she says. I nod in agreement. Mormon, but normal. Two Normons in a sea of Boremons and Whoremons.

Nicole Hardy

#6. Already I'm wondering if it will happen again, and when: that what I've been conditioned to fear, taught to avoid, will instead reveal the strangest, most inexplicable beauty.

Nicole Hardy

#7. I am shocked at the openness with which people reveal their secrets and personal failures. Until I realize: not everyone has been raised in a culture of perfection; they don't see a benefit to the shellac required to keep up appearances.

Nicole Hardy

#8. My throat closes against the words I can't swallow, not one more time. Because it's not true, what they're telling me
what they've been telling me since I was a child. There cannot be only one way to be a woman. My identity cannot be something I've never felt.

Nicole Hardy

#9. But every time I go to church with you, I feel like everyone's trying to trap me in a room and convert me.' Which, in truth, they are. 'I want you, and your family, to love me for who I am,' he shouts, 'To let me be who I am.

Nicole Hardy

#10. Damn, girl,' says Jomo. 'You can play hard to get.'
'Unfortunately for both of us,' I say, softening, 'I'm not playing.

Nicole Hardy

#11. Rather than envy, anticipation, or joy, what I feel when I look at the bride is a shortness of breath. I hear the echo of doors closing, as if every one of her life's decisions has just been made.

Nicole Hardy

#12. I would, for the love of God, feel a man's hands on me before I die.

Nicole Hardy

#13. For Mormon women, however, motherhood is an identity, rather than a role.

Nicole Hardy