Debra Ollivier

“If you forbid [children] from doing what is natural , they will seek it out later in ways that are unnatural and perverse.”

“harness your own power though what you keep to yourself”

“Invest your time in what is personally meaningful and relevant”

“She is focused on living her own full life, following her own agenda and cultivating her actual self, rather than reinventing herself or pining away to be someone she's not.”

“Consider your life your personal currency-and invest it wisely.”

“Feed your mind. Cultivate impressions and opinions. Know what you think.”

“For one of the first pressures that bear down on American girls is the pressure not only to be liked but to be like everyone else. This initial feat of self-transformation often involves loosening one's grip on that quiet sense of inner self and hitching one's wagon to a single standard of beauty. The stress of leaping through that hoop insinuates itself into the young heart and soul with a vengeance, and insecurities go from being hard little buds of confusion to overripe, snarled and tyrannical fruits that hang on the vine as we age.”

“[For the French] time...is an ephemeral currency and should be spent doing the things that make life worth living.”